These two songs have been stuck in my head lately. Just thought I would share them with y'all. I've also decided to add several versions of Stompin' at the Savoy by different artists. The Savoy was a ballroom in Harlem for integrated audiences. Home of Chick Webb's Orchestra and host of several great swing musicians, Ella Fitzgerald performed there in the 1930s and a number of famous dances like the Lindy Hop were popularized there.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
My Black Power Comic
A friend once referred to The Boondocks comic strip as my "black power comic." He was correct. I love The Boondocks comic and TV show. I would die for it. The Freeman family, consisting of Huey, Riley, and their grandfather represent the 3 different 20th century approaches to race by African-Americans. Their grandfather, Robert, epitomizes traditional black Southern Civil Rights-era views and strategies on race relations. Huey, named after co-founder of the Black Panthers, Huey P. Newton, represents the Black Power and militant movements of the late 60s and 70s. Riley, on the other hand, symbolizes the current generation of black youths enamored with gangsta rap and that sub-culture, which according to his brother Riley is known for ignorance, lack of foresight, and concerned only with instant gratification. Of course you have to love Thomas Dubois, the "Uncle Tom" black neighbor in the blindingly white suburb of Woodcrest. His white wife Sarah and their adorable and innocent biracial daughter Jazmine provide another look at race relations through interracial relationships. Of course the comic also brought up the savagery from which whites have risen in this country, an issue that they don't like to be reminded of.
So right away black readers who saw Boondocks in the newspapers had representation and a voice for the first time. This is the only comic that ever addressed issues of race with black characters and was actually funny and insightful.Huey's pro-black and angry rhetoric greeted millions of Americans in the morning hours for approximately six years, 1999-2005. Indeed, as Huey's Brooklyn friend Caesar once says in one strip, "When are millions of Americans ready to wake up to the angry rantings of a black kid." Well, it actually happened! Moreover, I'm glad creator Aaron McGruder moved away from family-based humor after 9/11, thereby making The Boondocks the most critical and political comic in the country.
After 9/11, Huey began blasting the Bush regime at every opportunity. Although Bush was always a target of Huey's rantings, newspaper (The Free Huey, named after Black Panther Huey Newton) and dialogue with his friends and family, the first 2 years of the comic focused on the move from the Southside of Chicago to the white suburb of Woodcrest and the sudden impact the Freemans had on their white neighbors and vice versa. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued from these encounters and reactions and I believe Huey's character, beliefs, and actions exposed white folks to different aspects and perspectives on black radicalism.
Unfortunately too many whites don't realize that McGruder is also satirizing elements of black radicalism and criticizes blacks just as much as he criticizes or makes fun of white people and white culture. McGruder pokes fun at Huey Freeman's crazy beliefs in conspiracies, criticizes the economic philosophy of black nationalism and forms of black cultural nationalism, such as Kwanzaa. Furthermore, through Riley and Grandad, he criticizes "studio gangsters," integration and outmoded forms of resistance to racism and segregation advocated by Tom Dubois and Grandad and the NAACP. So I can say that I disagree with a friend who feels that the comic strip was too hostile toward white readers but perhaps he just does not understand due to his lack of exposure to black nationalism and African American history.
Anyway, The Boondocks television show is hilarious but lacks the political punch of the comic. Obviously the switch in format does not allow the show to keep up with everyday news in politics. Instead, the TV program focuses on the characters and uses more controversial humor. As Aaron McGruder himself admits, it's good that the program came on the air after Dave Chappelle, whose television show opened the way for more freedom of expression and less censorship in television.
However, I am disappointed with the lack of Michael Caesar in the first 2 seasons of The Boondocks. This Brooklyn youth transplanted in a white suburb provided a lot of humor and served as a foil to Huey in the comic. I also enjoyed his nerdy conversations with Huey about X-Men, film, Star Wars, and kung fu movies. I have yet to see most episodes of the 3rd season of The Boondocks but the season premiere made fun of black America's love of Barack Obama. As Huey correctly predicted, the election of Barack Obama did not change the system or improve conditions for black folks.
In conclusion, I will simply quote Huey Freeman's comments on the George Bush regime during a Thanksgiving prayer. Remember this came out recently after 9/11 while most comics and journalists were defending Bush and the curtailment of civil liberties. Matter of fact, Huey is the only character in comic strip history who ever advocated theft since the whole country was built on stolen land. I love this brother.
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Best of Art Blakey
Love, the Mystery Of from The African Beat, an album inspired by African folk music. Yusef Lateef lends his valuable skills and knowledge of world music along with multiple percussionists. Art Blakey went to West Africa where he claims he studied religion but it's hard to believe that he didn't also study drumming there...
This rendition of A Night in Tunisia is from the original lineup of the Jazz Messengers, with Horace Silver playing funky piano. Live from Birdland.
It's Only A Paper Moon is an old jazz standard that is rebooted in this recording by the Jazz Messengers with Lee Morgan on trumpet and Wayne Shorter.
Dat Dere, like Moanin', is a funky blues. Like Moanin', it was composed by the pianist, Bobby Timmons. Here's a live performance.
I've always liked Lester Left Town, Wayne Shorter's tribute to the then recently deceased tenor player Lester Young.
Bu's Delight is another fun song with a good drum solo from Blakey. Bu was Blakey's nickname...
Pensativa is a Latin-influenced piece.
Moanin' is one of my favorite songs of all time. Bluesy and drenching with funk. Lee Morgan's trumpet solo is one of his best. Benny Golson aint half bad either.
The Drum Thunder Suite features Blakey drumming in different styles to showcase his abilities as a drummer. Composed by Benny Golson.
I've always liked Blakey's solo on this Middle-Eastern-influenced song.
Lee Morgan's Kozo's Waltz is another favorite of mine with great drumming and a funky bassline.
This recording of A Night in Tunisia with Lee Morgan and Wayne Shorter is my favorite. Looks and sounds amazing live.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Philadelphia
Ah, the City of Brotherly Love. I've always wanted to visit the city. Home of Fresh Prince Will Smith and unbeknownst to many, the home of many St. Domingue refugees of African descent in the early 19th century. The history of black Philadelphia runs deep since the city always had a large black population. The city obviously has a deep history that would make someone like myself go crazy.
However, the Philadelphia I'm thinking of right now is the film, starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. Denzel was flawless as usual and the movie was interesting but I couldn't help thinking that the ending was cheesy. Of course I agree that Andy Beckett's character should not have been terminated because of AIDS and his sexual orientation, but I don't think that the film broke new ground. Using stars like Hanks and Washington to expose a wider audience to the problem of AIDS was a great move on Jonathan Demme's part, who also directed Silence of the Lambs. So I guess I would agree with Roger Ebert and give this movie 3.5 out of 4 stars. Strong performances from Hanks and the beautiful scene in which Denzel's character finally sees the humanity in Andy is stunning. I don't want to ruin the movie for y'all, but it is a rarity to see something so well made in film.
3.5 stars out of 4
Monday, January 24, 2011
Songs Stuck in My Head
For the last 2 weeks, the following songs have been stuck in my head so y'all should listen to them as well.
I recently listened to Nas's Illmatic album again and some of the song have been stuck in my head, especially One Love. One Love is a based on a letter Nas sent to a friend in prison. It has a great jazzy beat that was produced by Q-Tip, best known as a rapper in A Tribe Called Quest.
The following are just some of my favorites from the album
Life's a Bitch
The World Is Yours
Memory Lane (Sittin' In da Park)
Here's another favorite of mine not from Illmatic
Purple
In addition to Nas, some Gil Scott-Heron has been stuck in my head lately.
This song, about a guy who thinks he's a ladies man but really isn't is a great jazzy and funky song written by Gil Scott-Heron at the zenith of his recording career.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Even More Essays!
Here is a pointless project from a high school literature class. I basically wrote 2 or 3 short essays on The Plague by Albert Camus. This one might be a un poco largo...However, I really do like Camus and The Plague. Fascinating stuff...
The Plague and World War II
Albert Camus lived through the horrors of the German occupation and the Holocaust. These two events undeniably influenced his novel, The Plague, which is often perceived as an allegory for the Resistance. Although the foe in The Plague is an impersonal, faceless bubonic plague, the allegory remains valid because it can be linked to any struggle, not only the Resistance. Therefore, the novel is also an allegory that transcends struggles against any form of totalitarianism because of its universal applications.
The quarantine wards resemble Nazi concentration camps. For instance, Rieux notes, “The walls served another purpose: they screened the unfortunates in quarantine from the view of the people on the road” (238). This forced separation of loved ones parallels the Nazi dehumanization and slaughter of Jews and others who were buried in mass pits like the victims of the plague (175). The government of Oran even sends armed forces to collect the diseased (90). Similarly, the Gestapo entered the homes of suspected dissenters who were usually never seen again. Later, the government of Oran forbids all residents and visitors from leaving the city, including French journalist Rambert, who has no relationship with Oran (106). Furthermore, communication with the outside world is centered in the hands of the government, which can be likened to Nazi Germany’s regulation and inspection of telegrams in Vichy France to undermine the Resistance.
Moreover, responses to the plague reflect those of England and France before Hitler’s invasion of Poland. No one wished to see war, thus a policy of appeasement became England’s reaction to German expansion and Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Likewise, in The Plague, the officials refused to acknowledge the gravity of the plague by labeling it a fever in official notices (51). Similarly, the old asthma patient who says the fever is an outbreak of cholera also symbolizes the responses of the public to the growing crisis (60). His denial of the plague echoes those who shuddered at the very idea of another World War and did not recognize the extent to which the Nazis annihilated European Jews.
The characters Cottard and Father Paneloux also represent different stances on the plague, which were evident during World War II. Cottard, the criminally minded neighbor of Grand, profits from smuggling rationed goods (140). Cottard interestingly parallels Oscar Schindler, who took advantage of Jewish slave labor to manufacture goods for Nazi Germany. Paneloux’s first sermon, which blames the people of Oran for the plague, is also comparable to many European attitudes to the World War II (95).
Thus, it is quite simple to see The Plague as an allegory for World War II. The conditions in the quarantine wards, the responses of the Oranais officials and inhabitants, and actions of the main characters establish the novel as a powerful metaphor for the War. However, Camus universalizes the struggle against the plague so that it applies to every resistance to oppressive systems, including fascism and communism.
The Moral Dialogue in The Plague
In Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague, Camus offers several interpretations of ethics through Rieux, Tarrou, Grand, Cottard, Paneloux, and the rest of the population. Each character is an abstract voice of various philosophical positions. Therefore, the novel should not only be read as an allegory of the German Occupation of France, but an exposition of the moral climate in the West, with sustained ethical tension to allow the reader to reach his or her own conclusion concerning the superior moral code.
According to John Krapp, Camus’s novel contains theoretical benchmarks to help the reader ascertain whether a specific moral voice supports an absolute or a contingent ethical position (Krapp 660). The character’s sensitivity to the contingency of ethical standards is predicated upon the character’s willingness to renounce the daily routine of habit, which dominated the lives of Oranais, and persevere in the fight against the plague (661). The above essentially asserts that each character’s moral code and willingness to change their lifestyle from the bourgeois mentality of the majority of Oranais, determines whether they survive the plague or not. Throughout the text, Rieux discloses information in an unbiased manner on the bourgeois existence of Oran’s inhabitants, who are enslaved by daily habit and routine. For example, they live empty lives devoted to “doing business (Camus 4). Their lives are so enthralled by the pursuit of wealth and the cultivation of habits that the city is soulless and lifeless even before the plague strikes. To survive the plague, one must avoid attachments to the ideology of comfort through commercial success, something the majority of Oranais do not do.
Unlike the greater part of Oran, Grand is not attracted to capitalist ideology. His reason for supporting Cottard after his suicide attempt is “one’s got to help one’s neighbor, hasn’t one (Camus 20)?” He conveys no desire to escape his moral responsibility to others. Additionally, Grand’s poverty after twenty-two years of promises of promotion never motivates him to join capitalist enterprises (44).
His ascetic life free of material desires allows Grand to avoid infection until his near-death experience with the plague. Krapp continues, “His belief that he might one day produce his flawless, referential sentence is, as I have noted, a potential distraction from moral thinking” (Krapp 672). Grand’s obsession with finding the right words for the first sentence of his letter distracts him, causing his infection until he requests Rieux burn his manuscript of fifty pages with variations of the same sentence (Camus 263). Grand’s miraculous resurrection after he ends his relentless pursuit of his absurd letter to Jeanne, suggests he is once again able to dedicate himself to fighting the plague.
On the other hand, Jesuit priest Father Paneloux’s morality is based on a belief in God and moral absolutism which Camus himself was known to disagree with. According to the absurdist school of thought, there is no intrinsic moral good. Instead, humans hold the potential for good and must bring it about themselves. In his first sermon, Father Paneloux blames the epidemic on the immorality of the townspeople (95).
After witnessing the agony of Magistrate Othon’s son, Father Paneloux’s next sermon, directed at Rieux, states people must believe or deny everything because God is testing their faith (223). Therefore, the death of the child is necessary for spiritual hunger (226). By suggesting one should love what one does not understand, Paneloux’s sermon implies loving an abstraction and challenges Rieux’s moral relativism. However, Paneloux does not leave the fate of Oran in God’s hands. He joins Rieux’s sanitation workers to combat the epidemic until he catches a fever without the symptoms of the plague and dies. However, it is likely his death was caused by an internal conflict between his religious views and the reality of the situation in Oran. His moral code is initially based solely on faith, but even he doubts it as it becomes unclear if he is more devoted to a transcendental or human moral code. As Krapp observes, “Such an ethic is essentially an ideological buffer between human beings and unhappiness, since heaven awaits those who live justly even in misery” (Krapp 671).
Next, Cottard’s ethical position is solely founded upon an adherence to the bourgeois pursuit of capital. The only character in the novel that fears the conclusion of the epidemic, Cottard profits from smuggling rationed goods in Oran (Camus 140). He dreads the coming of the police, whom he believes will come to arrest him for a crime committed in his youth. He is not interested in developing solidarity against the plague, and hopes for the perpetual pursuit of wealth and return to life ruled by daily habit (Krapp 673). In fact, when Tarrou asks him to become a member of his crew of sanitation volunteers, Cottard refuses because he is making too much money (Camus 158). Cottard also perpetuates the class divisions associated with capitalism by the sale of provisions at exorbitant prices to the wealthiest sector of society while the poor went short of everything (237). His lack of moral consciousness reflects the infectious capitalist frame of mind that rules Oran before and after the plague.
Alternatively, Tarrou does possess an ethical position that motivates him to form a team of sanitation workers to fight the plague. Of all the principal characters, Tarrou possesses the clearest credentials for an influential moral voice. Though once an agitator against the death penalty, Tarrou could not participate in any party willing to sacrifice human lives for the building up of a new world in which murder would cease to be (250). When Rieux inquires about his moral code, Tarrou simply says, “Comprehension” (130). Tarrou’s sense of ethics is undoubtedly humanist. For example, Tarrou initiates the sanitation volunteer group so condemned prisoners would not be killed doing the necessary manual labor to restrict the spread of the plague (124). His belief in a world divided into pestilences, victims, and rare true healers also illustrates his desire to discover the path to peace by alleviating the damage of the pestilence to the people of Oran (254). To Tarrou, the plague is man’s tendency to murder his fellow man (254), therefore his resistance to the epidemic is symbolic of his internal conflict between killing and assisting humankind.
Finally, Rieux, the narrator of the novel, endeavors to preserve ethical conflict between the characters but is clearly more related to Tarrou than any other character. His reason for fighting the plague is logic, not heroism (133). Thus, it is absurd to not battle the plague because fatalism has no meaning to him. He chose the career of a doctor to alleviate suffering, not accept it, nothing like Paneloux’s acceptance of the death of the Magistrate’s son as part of God’s plan (218). Rieux also gives value to life by opposing death, which is absurdist thinking because he creates his own meaning of life. Rieux is even sensitive to social injustice, something he reveals when he does not charge a poor patient, unlike the bourgeois residents of Oran. However, Rieux discloses information in an impartial style to convince the reader which ethical position is best.
In conclusion, the main characters of the plague represent different ethical perceptions on humankind. From Tarrou’s humanism to Cottard’s self-centered, capitalistic principles, Rieux presents several ethical attitudes, including his own absurdist interpretations of the moral dialogue in the novel.
The Impact of Camus’s Life on His Writing
Like all writers, Albert Camus’s personal life permeated his writing. His family, poverty, Algerian upbringing, and experience during the Second World War deeply influenced his writings regarding philosophy, colonialism, war, sentiments of solidarity, and his humanist ethical position. In The Plague, Camus deftly weaves an unforgettable tale that utilizes all aspects of his life.
Born in Mondovia, Algeria, 1913, Camus was part of the community of pied-noir, or European settlers in Algeria. Colonized by the French in 1830, many Southern Europeans decided to migrate to the Mediterranean coastal of Algeria in search of a better life, including Camus’s French father and Spanish mother (Heims). Although he lived in Algiers, the capital of the colony, Camus used Oran, another coastal city for the setting of The Plague.
The almost complete absence of the autochthonous Arab population shows the depth to which Arabs are excluded in French Algeria. Although the journalist Rambert comes to Oran to write an article about the living conditions in the Arab quarter of the city, they are never alluded to again in the novel (Camus 83). Similarly, Camus wrote an article about the living conditions in Kabylia, a region of Algeria, for the anticolonialist and socialist newspaper, Alger Republicain (Heims). Paradoxically, Camus argued against French imperialism while simultaneously praising its influence on Algerians. As a pacifist, Camus disagreed with Jean Paul Sartre on the Algerian problem. Sartre, who was a Marxist, supported the National Liberation Front of Algeria’s (FLN) violent overthrow of French hegemony while Camus believed in a nonviolent resolution, which never materialized. In addition, Camus delivered a lecture entitled, ‘The New Mediterranean Culture” which omitted Arab and Muslim agency in the Mediterranean region and history (Foxlee 78). This exclusion of Arabs forces one to question Camus’s dedication to Algerian independence.
War also played a significant role in the life of Albert Camus. His father perished at the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during the First World War. Fatherless, Camus lived in squalid conditions (Heims). Furthermore, Camus joined the Resistance during World War II as an editor for the underground newspaper Combat after witnessing the execution of French Communist Gabriel Peri at the hands of the Germans (Aubrey). The quarantine wards, where victims of the plague are forcibly sent and buried in mass graves, indubitably demonstrate the insidious influence of World War II and the Holocaust on The Plague. Like France under German Occupation in 1940, Oran is separated from the rest of the world after the government closes the gates of the city and executes Jews, Communists, and revolutionaries. Moreover, Cottard, who is partially inspired by the Vichy government of Marshal Petain, collaborates with the plague to enrich himself at the expense of the French people like Petain’s collaboration with the Nazis.
Another theme explored in The Plague that is especially relevant to the life of Camus is solidarity. During his participation in the Resistance as a journalist for Combat, Camus learned to cooperate with others to survive the atrocities of German occupation. In the novel, solidarity becomes necessary to fight the plague because individual suffering is meaningless. Without a combined effort, it would be impossible to contain the epidemic. Nevertheless, their solidarity in volunteering in the sanitation squads and resisting the plague creates a meaning for their lives that surpasses individual needs and desires. This humanistic connection between the townspeople of Oran to toil for the collective good of society eventually spares the city from the onslaught of the plague.
Besides war and solidarity, Camus argues for ethical humanism in his essay “Reflections on the Guillotine. (Aubrey)” Supposedly stemming from a story his mother recounted about his father’s observation of an execution, Camus remained opposed to the death penalty and torture throughout his life. Camus's arguments included blaming the society that produced the criminals, human fallibility in making judgments, the hypocrisy behind the idea of capital punishment deterring criminals while the executions are committed in private, the role of alcohol in crimes, and the loss of basic human dignity suffered by the criminal (Aubrey).
Obviously, Tarrou exemplifies his opposition to capital punishment. The son of a prosecutor who enjoyed watching executions, Tarrou campaigns against it with a radical organization until told death is inevitable to abolish the death penalty (Camus 250). Tarrou is instinctually moved by the fact the man condemned by his father will be executed (248). Like Camus himself, Tarrou sees the loss of basic human dignity in every condemned man and knows each human being is plague-stricken. The plague, or the desire to inflict pain and murder fellow human beings permeates every aspect of human life, yet Tarrou continues to resist it (253) Thus, he believes it is his moral duty to develop the sanitation squadrons without the use of prisoners because such a thing is equivalent to the death sentence death (124).
As one can obviously see, Camus used aspects of his own experience in life to write the novel. His humble origins in Algeria, the effects both World Wars on his family, his involvement with the Resistance, and human rights inspired the symbolic plague, the bourgeois townspeople of Oran, and the principal characters of the novel. Every writer inescapably employs parts of his or her life to complete a novel. Camus is no exception.
Works Cited
Aubrey, Bryan. "Critical Essay on The Plague." Novels for Students. The Gale Group, 2003.
Camus, Albert. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York. Vintage International, 1991.
Duarte, Jack. The Resistance. Bloomington: Authorhouse, 2005.
Foxlee, Neil. "Mediterranean Humanism or Colonialism with a Human Face? Contextualising Albert Camus' 'The New Mediterranean Culture'" Mediterranean Historical Review 21 (2006): 77-97.
Heims, Neil. "Camus, Albert." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Albert Camus, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCAC02&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 17, 2008).
Krapp, John. "Time and ethics in Albert Camus's The Plague." University of Toronto Quarterly 68 (1999). EBSCOhost. 10 Dec. 2008.
McKee, Jenne. "Exile, Revolt, and Redemption: The Writings of Albert Camus." Bloom's Literary Reference Online.
Quinn, Edward. "Algerian War of Independence." History in Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2004. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= HIL005&SingleRecord=True
Stephanson, Raymond. "The Plague Narratives of Defoe and Camus: Illness As A Metaphor." Modern Language Quarterly 48 (1987): 224-42. EBSCOhost. 9 Dec. 2008.
Todd, Olivier. Albert Camus: A Life. Trans. Benjamin Ivry. New York: Knopf, 1997.
The Plague and World War II
Albert Camus lived through the horrors of the German occupation and the Holocaust. These two events undeniably influenced his novel, The Plague, which is often perceived as an allegory for the Resistance. Although the foe in The Plague is an impersonal, faceless bubonic plague, the allegory remains valid because it can be linked to any struggle, not only the Resistance. Therefore, the novel is also an allegory that transcends struggles against any form of totalitarianism because of its universal applications.
The quarantine wards resemble Nazi concentration camps. For instance, Rieux notes, “The walls served another purpose: they screened the unfortunates in quarantine from the view of the people on the road” (238). This forced separation of loved ones parallels the Nazi dehumanization and slaughter of Jews and others who were buried in mass pits like the victims of the plague (175). The government of Oran even sends armed forces to collect the diseased (90). Similarly, the Gestapo entered the homes of suspected dissenters who were usually never seen again. Later, the government of Oran forbids all residents and visitors from leaving the city, including French journalist Rambert, who has no relationship with Oran (106). Furthermore, communication with the outside world is centered in the hands of the government, which can be likened to Nazi Germany’s regulation and inspection of telegrams in Vichy France to undermine the Resistance.
Moreover, responses to the plague reflect those of England and France before Hitler’s invasion of Poland. No one wished to see war, thus a policy of appeasement became England’s reaction to German expansion and Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Likewise, in The Plague, the officials refused to acknowledge the gravity of the plague by labeling it a fever in official notices (51). Similarly, the old asthma patient who says the fever is an outbreak of cholera also symbolizes the responses of the public to the growing crisis (60). His denial of the plague echoes those who shuddered at the very idea of another World War and did not recognize the extent to which the Nazis annihilated European Jews.
The characters Cottard and Father Paneloux also represent different stances on the plague, which were evident during World War II. Cottard, the criminally minded neighbor of Grand, profits from smuggling rationed goods (140). Cottard interestingly parallels Oscar Schindler, who took advantage of Jewish slave labor to manufacture goods for Nazi Germany. Paneloux’s first sermon, which blames the people of Oran for the plague, is also comparable to many European attitudes to the World War II (95).
Thus, it is quite simple to see The Plague as an allegory for World War II. The conditions in the quarantine wards, the responses of the Oranais officials and inhabitants, and actions of the main characters establish the novel as a powerful metaphor for the War. However, Camus universalizes the struggle against the plague so that it applies to every resistance to oppressive systems, including fascism and communism.
The Moral Dialogue in The Plague
In Albert Camus’ novel, The Plague, Camus offers several interpretations of ethics through Rieux, Tarrou, Grand, Cottard, Paneloux, and the rest of the population. Each character is an abstract voice of various philosophical positions. Therefore, the novel should not only be read as an allegory of the German Occupation of France, but an exposition of the moral climate in the West, with sustained ethical tension to allow the reader to reach his or her own conclusion concerning the superior moral code.
According to John Krapp, Camus’s novel contains theoretical benchmarks to help the reader ascertain whether a specific moral voice supports an absolute or a contingent ethical position (Krapp 660). The character’s sensitivity to the contingency of ethical standards is predicated upon the character’s willingness to renounce the daily routine of habit, which dominated the lives of Oranais, and persevere in the fight against the plague (661). The above essentially asserts that each character’s moral code and willingness to change their lifestyle from the bourgeois mentality of the majority of Oranais, determines whether they survive the plague or not. Throughout the text, Rieux discloses information in an unbiased manner on the bourgeois existence of Oran’s inhabitants, who are enslaved by daily habit and routine. For example, they live empty lives devoted to “doing business (Camus 4). Their lives are so enthralled by the pursuit of wealth and the cultivation of habits that the city is soulless and lifeless even before the plague strikes. To survive the plague, one must avoid attachments to the ideology of comfort through commercial success, something the majority of Oranais do not do.
Unlike the greater part of Oran, Grand is not attracted to capitalist ideology. His reason for supporting Cottard after his suicide attempt is “one’s got to help one’s neighbor, hasn’t one (Camus 20)?” He conveys no desire to escape his moral responsibility to others. Additionally, Grand’s poverty after twenty-two years of promises of promotion never motivates him to join capitalist enterprises (44).
His ascetic life free of material desires allows Grand to avoid infection until his near-death experience with the plague. Krapp continues, “His belief that he might one day produce his flawless, referential sentence is, as I have noted, a potential distraction from moral thinking” (Krapp 672). Grand’s obsession with finding the right words for the first sentence of his letter distracts him, causing his infection until he requests Rieux burn his manuscript of fifty pages with variations of the same sentence (Camus 263). Grand’s miraculous resurrection after he ends his relentless pursuit of his absurd letter to Jeanne, suggests he is once again able to dedicate himself to fighting the plague.
On the other hand, Jesuit priest Father Paneloux’s morality is based on a belief in God and moral absolutism which Camus himself was known to disagree with. According to the absurdist school of thought, there is no intrinsic moral good. Instead, humans hold the potential for good and must bring it about themselves. In his first sermon, Father Paneloux blames the epidemic on the immorality of the townspeople (95).
After witnessing the agony of Magistrate Othon’s son, Father Paneloux’s next sermon, directed at Rieux, states people must believe or deny everything because God is testing their faith (223). Therefore, the death of the child is necessary for spiritual hunger (226). By suggesting one should love what one does not understand, Paneloux’s sermon implies loving an abstraction and challenges Rieux’s moral relativism. However, Paneloux does not leave the fate of Oran in God’s hands. He joins Rieux’s sanitation workers to combat the epidemic until he catches a fever without the symptoms of the plague and dies. However, it is likely his death was caused by an internal conflict between his religious views and the reality of the situation in Oran. His moral code is initially based solely on faith, but even he doubts it as it becomes unclear if he is more devoted to a transcendental or human moral code. As Krapp observes, “Such an ethic is essentially an ideological buffer between human beings and unhappiness, since heaven awaits those who live justly even in misery” (Krapp 671).
Next, Cottard’s ethical position is solely founded upon an adherence to the bourgeois pursuit of capital. The only character in the novel that fears the conclusion of the epidemic, Cottard profits from smuggling rationed goods in Oran (Camus 140). He dreads the coming of the police, whom he believes will come to arrest him for a crime committed in his youth. He is not interested in developing solidarity against the plague, and hopes for the perpetual pursuit of wealth and return to life ruled by daily habit (Krapp 673). In fact, when Tarrou asks him to become a member of his crew of sanitation volunteers, Cottard refuses because he is making too much money (Camus 158). Cottard also perpetuates the class divisions associated with capitalism by the sale of provisions at exorbitant prices to the wealthiest sector of society while the poor went short of everything (237). His lack of moral consciousness reflects the infectious capitalist frame of mind that rules Oran before and after the plague.
Alternatively, Tarrou does possess an ethical position that motivates him to form a team of sanitation workers to fight the plague. Of all the principal characters, Tarrou possesses the clearest credentials for an influential moral voice. Though once an agitator against the death penalty, Tarrou could not participate in any party willing to sacrifice human lives for the building up of a new world in which murder would cease to be (250). When Rieux inquires about his moral code, Tarrou simply says, “Comprehension” (130). Tarrou’s sense of ethics is undoubtedly humanist. For example, Tarrou initiates the sanitation volunteer group so condemned prisoners would not be killed doing the necessary manual labor to restrict the spread of the plague (124). His belief in a world divided into pestilences, victims, and rare true healers also illustrates his desire to discover the path to peace by alleviating the damage of the pestilence to the people of Oran (254). To Tarrou, the plague is man’s tendency to murder his fellow man (254), therefore his resistance to the epidemic is symbolic of his internal conflict between killing and assisting humankind.
Finally, Rieux, the narrator of the novel, endeavors to preserve ethical conflict between the characters but is clearly more related to Tarrou than any other character. His reason for fighting the plague is logic, not heroism (133). Thus, it is absurd to not battle the plague because fatalism has no meaning to him. He chose the career of a doctor to alleviate suffering, not accept it, nothing like Paneloux’s acceptance of the death of the Magistrate’s son as part of God’s plan (218). Rieux also gives value to life by opposing death, which is absurdist thinking because he creates his own meaning of life. Rieux is even sensitive to social injustice, something he reveals when he does not charge a poor patient, unlike the bourgeois residents of Oran. However, Rieux discloses information in an impartial style to convince the reader which ethical position is best.
In conclusion, the main characters of the plague represent different ethical perceptions on humankind. From Tarrou’s humanism to Cottard’s self-centered, capitalistic principles, Rieux presents several ethical attitudes, including his own absurdist interpretations of the moral dialogue in the novel.
The Impact of Camus’s Life on His Writing
Like all writers, Albert Camus’s personal life permeated his writing. His family, poverty, Algerian upbringing, and experience during the Second World War deeply influenced his writings regarding philosophy, colonialism, war, sentiments of solidarity, and his humanist ethical position. In The Plague, Camus deftly weaves an unforgettable tale that utilizes all aspects of his life.
Born in Mondovia, Algeria, 1913, Camus was part of the community of pied-noir, or European settlers in Algeria. Colonized by the French in 1830, many Southern Europeans decided to migrate to the Mediterranean coastal of Algeria in search of a better life, including Camus’s French father and Spanish mother (Heims). Although he lived in Algiers, the capital of the colony, Camus used Oran, another coastal city for the setting of The Plague.
The almost complete absence of the autochthonous Arab population shows the depth to which Arabs are excluded in French Algeria. Although the journalist Rambert comes to Oran to write an article about the living conditions in the Arab quarter of the city, they are never alluded to again in the novel (Camus 83). Similarly, Camus wrote an article about the living conditions in Kabylia, a region of Algeria, for the anticolonialist and socialist newspaper, Alger Republicain (Heims). Paradoxically, Camus argued against French imperialism while simultaneously praising its influence on Algerians. As a pacifist, Camus disagreed with Jean Paul Sartre on the Algerian problem. Sartre, who was a Marxist, supported the National Liberation Front of Algeria’s (FLN) violent overthrow of French hegemony while Camus believed in a nonviolent resolution, which never materialized. In addition, Camus delivered a lecture entitled, ‘The New Mediterranean Culture” which omitted Arab and Muslim agency in the Mediterranean region and history (Foxlee 78). This exclusion of Arabs forces one to question Camus’s dedication to Algerian independence.
War also played a significant role in the life of Albert Camus. His father perished at the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during the First World War. Fatherless, Camus lived in squalid conditions (Heims). Furthermore, Camus joined the Resistance during World War II as an editor for the underground newspaper Combat after witnessing the execution of French Communist Gabriel Peri at the hands of the Germans (Aubrey). The quarantine wards, where victims of the plague are forcibly sent and buried in mass graves, indubitably demonstrate the insidious influence of World War II and the Holocaust on The Plague. Like France under German Occupation in 1940, Oran is separated from the rest of the world after the government closes the gates of the city and executes Jews, Communists, and revolutionaries. Moreover, Cottard, who is partially inspired by the Vichy government of Marshal Petain, collaborates with the plague to enrich himself at the expense of the French people like Petain’s collaboration with the Nazis.
Another theme explored in The Plague that is especially relevant to the life of Camus is solidarity. During his participation in the Resistance as a journalist for Combat, Camus learned to cooperate with others to survive the atrocities of German occupation. In the novel, solidarity becomes necessary to fight the plague because individual suffering is meaningless. Without a combined effort, it would be impossible to contain the epidemic. Nevertheless, their solidarity in volunteering in the sanitation squads and resisting the plague creates a meaning for their lives that surpasses individual needs and desires. This humanistic connection between the townspeople of Oran to toil for the collective good of society eventually spares the city from the onslaught of the plague.
Besides war and solidarity, Camus argues for ethical humanism in his essay “Reflections on the Guillotine. (Aubrey)” Supposedly stemming from a story his mother recounted about his father’s observation of an execution, Camus remained opposed to the death penalty and torture throughout his life. Camus's arguments included blaming the society that produced the criminals, human fallibility in making judgments, the hypocrisy behind the idea of capital punishment deterring criminals while the executions are committed in private, the role of alcohol in crimes, and the loss of basic human dignity suffered by the criminal (Aubrey).
Obviously, Tarrou exemplifies his opposition to capital punishment. The son of a prosecutor who enjoyed watching executions, Tarrou campaigns against it with a radical organization until told death is inevitable to abolish the death penalty (Camus 250). Tarrou is instinctually moved by the fact the man condemned by his father will be executed (248). Like Camus himself, Tarrou sees the loss of basic human dignity in every condemned man and knows each human being is plague-stricken. The plague, or the desire to inflict pain and murder fellow human beings permeates every aspect of human life, yet Tarrou continues to resist it (253) Thus, he believes it is his moral duty to develop the sanitation squadrons without the use of prisoners because such a thing is equivalent to the death sentence death (124).
As one can obviously see, Camus used aspects of his own experience in life to write the novel. His humble origins in Algeria, the effects both World Wars on his family, his involvement with the Resistance, and human rights inspired the symbolic plague, the bourgeois townspeople of Oran, and the principal characters of the novel. Every writer inescapably employs parts of his or her life to complete a novel. Camus is no exception.
Works Cited
Aubrey, Bryan. "Critical Essay on The Plague." Novels for Students. The Gale Group, 2003.
Camus, Albert. The Plague. Trans. Stuart Gilbert. New York. Vintage International, 1991.
Duarte, Jack. The Resistance. Bloomington: Authorhouse, 2005.
Foxlee, Neil. "Mediterranean Humanism or Colonialism with a Human Face? Contextualising Albert Camus' 'The New Mediterranean Culture'" Mediterranean Historical Review 21 (2006): 77-97.
Heims, Neil. "Camus, Albert." In Bloom, Harold, ed. Albert Camus, Bloom's BioCritiques. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishing, 2003. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= BCAC02&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 17, 2008).
Krapp, John. "Time and ethics in Albert Camus's The Plague." University of Toronto Quarterly 68 (1999). EBSCOhost. 10 Dec. 2008
McKee, Jenne. "Exile, Revolt, and Redemption: The Writings of Albert Camus." Bloom's Literary Reference Online.
Quinn, Edward. "Algerian War of Independence." History in Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2004. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= HIL005&SingleRecord=True
Stephanson, Raymond. "The Plague Narratives of Defoe and Camus: Illness As A Metaphor." Modern Language Quarterly 48 (1987): 224-42. EBSCOhost. 9 Dec. 2008
Todd, Olivier. Albert Camus: A Life. Trans. Benjamin Ivry. New York: Knopf, 1997.
Drug Legalization
I believe I also received an A or A- on this one back in high school.
A Case for Legalization
The widespread use of substances across the nation transcends national, economic, and racial boundaries. From impoverished chocolate cities to the wealthiest vanilla suburbs, drug use continues unabated. Over the last few decades, America's War on Drugs has repeatedly failed to end substance use, the drug trade, and the violence that currently plagues cities around the nation because of it. Therefore, the best solution to the dilemma requires immediate legalization and federal regulation of the distribution of narcotics. If a policy of tolerance instituted by the federal government controls drugs, and a policy of cooperation existed between liberal-minded states, the illicit drug trade and the violence it spawns could come to an end.
Though seemingly dangerous at first, decriminalization of soft drugs such as hashish and cannabis and the adoption of government regulatory practices would save billions of dollars and generate revenue from taxes. The current federal drug policy inflates prices and crime as addicts commit offenses to fund their habit and dealers battle for control of dissemination.
In 1992, the federal government spent $40 billion on arresting 1,000,000 drug offenders, the majority nonviolent offenders. In order to house the growing number of incarcerated drug users, federal and state governments spends hundreds of billions on law enforcement and prison construction, money that should go to social services and education. According to the National Institute of Justice the fixed cost of building a prison ranges from $60,000 to $75,000 per inmate and about $60 per day for operation costs. Furthermore, the American prison population, presently the largest in the world, contains nearly 65% drug offenders in the federal system. By permitting the use of narcotics, the federal government could create more funds for education, welfare, and infrastructure to create a better America.
Moreover, the criminalization of drugs cannot continue because of its opposition to nineteenth century British philosopher John Stuart Mill's harm principle. In Mill's On Liberty, he concludes that the government should not prevent citizens from engaging in victimless crimes such as drug use because government moralism contradicts the principles of liberalism. Therefore, a philosophical argument for legalization exists and clearly indicates the paternalism of state intervention in liberal democratic nations. If individual liberty and equality truly matter to the federal government, politicians would not endeavor to dictate the actions of the populace solely due to their morality. Government moralism, an affront to liberalism, attempts to force individual to behave in certain ways their leaders perceive as morally correct. If one wishes to engage in self-destructive or harmful behavior, the state cannot forbid one from harming oneself, an essential part of liberalism.
In addition, incarceration does not treat or alleviate the suffering of drug addicts, and in some cases, increases the likelihood of dependence. About 60% of regular users only began their addiction after their first arrest, which clearly demonstrates the fallibility of imprisonment. Nearly 25% of those who experiment with drugs do not abuse so why imprison decent Americans who do not harm others or themselves? Federal drug policy should treat addiction as a health and social problem instead because substance abusers have an addictive personality which leads to drug dependency in the first place. Indeed, medical professionals can treat such people with greater success and less damage to society than prisons because rehabilitation would decrease the probability of returning to abuse. Recidivism, the rate at which offenders continue to commit crimes after release, remains high, between 65% and 80%. This data also illustrates another failure of incarceration. A study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance concluded that only 28% of prisons had substance abuse programs and only 7% of programs included drug counseling, treatment and transitional planning. As one can undoubtedly see, prisons do not prepare nonviolent drug offenders who suffer from addiction to avoid re-arrest and pave the path to reintegration into society.
Furthermore, current drug policy hinders racial harmony and justice in the nation. Approximately 25% of young black males face imprisonment or probation due to drug offenses. According to the United States Public Health Service estimates in 1992, 76% of drug users were white and only 14% were African American, an estimate proportional to the U.S. population. The United States Sentencing Commission estimated that 65% of crack users are white. African Americans, however, account for nearly 35% of all drug arrests, 55% of all drug convictions, and 74% of all sentences. This discrepancy between black users and black prisoners makes evident the racial discrimination existent in the War on Drugs. White perceptions of black Americans remain decidedly negative when one raises the issue of drugs because of prison rates for young Black men even though drug users mainly come from White America. The massive incarceration of African Americans unquestionably damages Black families as well due to absent fathers and the increasingly parched pool of available Black men declines. The burgeoning number of young mothers in prison (more than 70% have children under the age of 18) because of drug offenses also causes tremendous problems for their children, who experience grief, anxiety, aggression, withdrawal, hyper vigilance, or sexualized behavior. These unfortunate children, future products of the foster care system, may commit crimes and suffer from psychological afflictions.
The War on Drugs, fraught with several problems, must come to an end.
Decriminalization of certain soft drugs would decrease the prison population, generate revenue from taxes on the distribution of narcotics, and lower expenses for penal complexes. Of course, a federal policy of tolerance comparable to that of the Netherlands requires international cooperation. America's influence in the United Nations, an organization that adheres to the traditional practice of attempting to achieve a drug-free world, could lead to the adoption of the liberal Dutch policy and finally end the War on Drugs.
Works Cited
Auerhahn, Kathleen. "California's Incarcerated Drug Offender Population, Yesterday, Today, and." Journal of Drug Issues 34 (2004): 95-120.
Buchanan, Julian, and Lee Young. "The War on Drugs-a war on drug users?" Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 7 (2000).
Bush-Baskette, Stephanie. "The War on Drugs and the Incarceration of Mothers." Journal of Drug Issues 30 (2000).
Geers, Thomas R. "Legalize Drugs and Stop the War on People." Education 116 (1995).
Maris, C. W. "The Disasters of War: American Repression Versus Dutch Tolerance in Drug Policy." Journal of Drug Issues 29 (1999): 493-510.
"Winning the War on Drugs: A "Second Chance" for Nonviolent Drug Offenders." Harvard Law Review 113: 1485-1502.
A Case for Legalization
The widespread use of substances across the nation transcends national, economic, and racial boundaries. From impoverished chocolate cities to the wealthiest vanilla suburbs, drug use continues unabated. Over the last few decades, America's War on Drugs has repeatedly failed to end substance use, the drug trade, and the violence that currently plagues cities around the nation because of it. Therefore, the best solution to the dilemma requires immediate legalization and federal regulation of the distribution of narcotics. If a policy of tolerance instituted by the federal government controls drugs, and a policy of cooperation existed between liberal-minded states, the illicit drug trade and the violence it spawns could come to an end.
Though seemingly dangerous at first, decriminalization of soft drugs such as hashish and cannabis and the adoption of government regulatory practices would save billions of dollars and generate revenue from taxes. The current federal drug policy inflates prices and crime as addicts commit offenses to fund their habit and dealers battle for control of dissemination.
In 1992, the federal government spent $40 billion on arresting 1,000,000 drug offenders, the majority nonviolent offenders. In order to house the growing number of incarcerated drug users, federal and state governments spends hundreds of billions on law enforcement and prison construction, money that should go to social services and education. According to the National Institute of Justice the fixed cost of building a prison ranges from $60,000 to $75,000 per inmate and about $60 per day for operation costs. Furthermore, the American prison population, presently the largest in the world, contains nearly 65% drug offenders in the federal system. By permitting the use of narcotics, the federal government could create more funds for education, welfare, and infrastructure to create a better America.
Moreover, the criminalization of drugs cannot continue because of its opposition to nineteenth century British philosopher John Stuart Mill's harm principle. In Mill's On Liberty, he concludes that the government should not prevent citizens from engaging in victimless crimes such as drug use because government moralism contradicts the principles of liberalism. Therefore, a philosophical argument for legalization exists and clearly indicates the paternalism of state intervention in liberal democratic nations. If individual liberty and equality truly matter to the federal government, politicians would not endeavor to dictate the actions of the populace solely due to their morality. Government moralism, an affront to liberalism, attempts to force individual to behave in certain ways their leaders perceive as morally correct. If one wishes to engage in self-destructive or harmful behavior, the state cannot forbid one from harming oneself, an essential part of liberalism.
In addition, incarceration does not treat or alleviate the suffering of drug addicts, and in some cases, increases the likelihood of dependence. About 60% of regular users only began their addiction after their first arrest, which clearly demonstrates the fallibility of imprisonment. Nearly 25% of those who experiment with drugs do not abuse so why imprison decent Americans who do not harm others or themselves? Federal drug policy should treat addiction as a health and social problem instead because substance abusers have an addictive personality which leads to drug dependency in the first place. Indeed, medical professionals can treat such people with greater success and less damage to society than prisons because rehabilitation would decrease the probability of returning to abuse. Recidivism, the rate at which offenders continue to commit crimes after release, remains high, between 65% and 80%. This data also illustrates another failure of incarceration. A study conducted by the Bureau of Justice Assistance concluded that only 28% of prisons had substance abuse programs and only 7% of programs included drug counseling, treatment and transitional planning. As one can undoubtedly see, prisons do not prepare nonviolent drug offenders who suffer from addiction to avoid re-arrest and pave the path to reintegration into society.
Furthermore, current drug policy hinders racial harmony and justice in the nation. Approximately 25% of young black males face imprisonment or probation due to drug offenses. According to the United States Public Health Service estimates in 1992, 76% of drug users were white and only 14% were African American, an estimate proportional to the U.S. population. The United States Sentencing Commission estimated that 65% of crack users are white. African Americans, however, account for nearly 35% of all drug arrests, 55% of all drug convictions, and 74% of all sentences. This discrepancy between black users and black prisoners makes evident the racial discrimination existent in the War on Drugs. White perceptions of black Americans remain decidedly negative when one raises the issue of drugs because of prison rates for young Black men even though drug users mainly come from White America. The massive incarceration of African Americans unquestionably damages Black families as well due to absent fathers and the increasingly parched pool of available Black men declines. The burgeoning number of young mothers in prison (more than 70% have children under the age of 18) because of drug offenses also causes tremendous problems for their children, who experience grief, anxiety, aggression, withdrawal, hyper vigilance, or sexualized behavior. These unfortunate children, future products of the foster care system, may commit crimes and suffer from psychological afflictions.
The War on Drugs, fraught with several problems, must come to an end.
Decriminalization of certain soft drugs would decrease the prison population, generate revenue from taxes on the distribution of narcotics, and lower expenses for penal complexes. Of course, a federal policy of tolerance comparable to that of the Netherlands requires international cooperation. America's influence in the United Nations, an organization that adheres to the traditional practice of attempting to achieve a drug-free world, could lead to the adoption of the liberal Dutch policy and finally end the War on Drugs.
Works Cited
Auerhahn, Kathleen. "California's Incarcerated Drug Offender Population, Yesterday, Today, and." Journal of Drug Issues 34 (2004): 95-120.
Buchanan, Julian, and Lee Young. "The War on Drugs-a war on drug users?" Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy 7 (2000).
Bush-Baskette, Stephanie. "The War on Drugs and the Incarceration of Mothers." Journal of Drug Issues 30 (2000).
Geers, Thomas R. "Legalize Drugs and Stop the War on People." Education 116 (1995).
Maris, C. W. "The Disasters of War: American Repression Versus Dutch Tolerance in Drug Policy." Journal of Drug Issues 29 (1999): 493-510.
"Winning the War on Drugs: A "Second Chance" for Nonviolent Drug Offenders." Harvard Law Review 113: 1485-1502.
Yes, Another A essay
This one uses a comparative approach to analyze a region in southwestern Colombia, the Cauca, and the island of Cuba. I received an A on this one. For some reason the footnotes were not pasted... Was it deserved?
Divergent Paths toward Citizenship: The Cauca and Cuba
During the second half of the 19th century in the Cauca valley of Colombia, populations of African descent became a powerful constituency of the Liberal party, seeing it as their best chance for political inclusion. Likewise, the Afro-Cuban population supported Cuban nationalists by joining the Liberation Army during Cuba’s war of independence for a chance for a chance of political inclusion. However, popular liberalism in late 19th century southwestern Colombia was more successful for Afro-Colombians than Cuba’s ideology of racelessness due to the rights conceded to them, black unity in the Liberal party and the burgeoning influence of scientific racism in Cuban domestic policies regarding race.
Though popular liberalism was more advantageous, many similarities exist between the two regions. For example, elite Liberals and nationalists craved the support of the majority of the population to seize power, which in both cases meant black support. Indeed, estimates of the black and mulatto population in the Cauca range from 34.8 percent in the 1851 census to 60.4 percent according to a local geographer. Comparable numbers for Afro-Cubans also existed, with 36 percent and 16 percent of the population as slave and free people of color. Elites and nationalists in Cuba obviously needed the political and military assistance of this majority to overthrow Conservative rule in Cauca and Spanish colonial rule with black soldiers. Although the black majority in both regions made them necessary allies, the racelessness ideology crafted by José Martà and others weakened the Afro-Cuban struggle for racial equality.
Intellectual radicals writing in the late 19th century such as MartÃ, who attacked the notion of the contamination of ancestry through slavery, also criticized discriminatory practices like segregation that isolate races, because “everything that separates man is a sin against nature. ” On the subject of Afro-Cuban political rights, Martà defended their inclusion as citizens of the new republic, declaring that the new Cuban government could not deny the rights already conceded to Afro-Cubans by the Spanish for political reasons and racial equality being necessary to establish a meritocracy. Even before MartÃ’s lofty words were penned in 1893, radical white leaders of the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) placed free blacks into positions of local authority, freed slaves, made them soldiers, and called them citizens. In the later phases of Cuban independence, at least 60 percent of the Liberation Army was Afro-Cuban, along with 40 percent of commissioned officers.
Colombia, on the other hand, was the setting for a different form of black mobilization. In order to take control of local politics in a region where Conservative hacendados ruled, Liberals found themselves forced to abolish the slave trade and establish democratic societies to encourage afrocaucano support. Perhaps best exemplified by a Liberal priest writing to the president, “The slaves that lose their chains bring to society gratitude for the government that has lifted the yoke off them…” Thus, abolition was primarily motivated by the desire to secure black followers. Before final abolition in 1852, juntas de manumision held public ceremonies to show the blacks their debt to the Liberal party, strengthening the link between freedom and their party. Throughout second half of the 19th century, elite Liberals established democratic societies, such as the Democratic Society of Cali, where all workers were invited to learn the values of republicanism, democracy, and liberalism.
However, the urban and rural poor of the region who came to the meetings shared their own concerns, and elite Liberals were forced to meet some of their demands, including an end to old forms of deference, removing property requirements for suffrage and ending monopolies like tobacco and aguardiente, which prevented tenants and small landholders from profiting by growing tobacco and cane and terminating vagrancy laws and new taxes. Blacks in the Cauca held public demonstrations and insulted Conservative elites, unlike Afro-Cubans who could not criticize discrimination without accusations of fomenting racial division and rebellion in an officially harmonious nation.
Interestingly, like the Liberation Army of Cuba, blacks were also incorporated into Colombian national guards that defended the Liberal government in the civil wars of the 19th century. Moreover, elite Liberals also developed a raceless citizenship ideology, with citizenship superseding all other identities. In the eyes of elites, citizenship was defined by one’s willingness to defend the party. In addition, liberalism in Colombia was perpetually connected to blackness in the Conservative imaginary, like Spain’s attempt to prevent rebellion by labeling the nationalist uprising a black revolt. Nevertheless, popular liberals did not necessarily share the elitist view on race, since their numerical superiority and unity in demands for racial equality were not considered over until they received economic equality through land allocation.
The multiracial society of the Cauca must also be taken into account as well, since mestizos and Indians often supported Conservatives, thereby pitting black workers against Conservative hacendados and their followers, which fostered racial collectivity among people of African descent who defined themselves in opposition to Conservatives and mestizos. Afro-Cubans, did not have the benefit of cultivating race consciousness, since in Cuba, those of African origin were courted by multiple established political parties after achieving independence, even electing blacks as representatives for Liberals and Conservatives.
For Cuba, scientific racism’s growing influence on Cuba’s upper class hindered the battle for racial equality The various established political parties divided the black vote, preventing a united front against the burgeoning influence of Social Darwinism, positivism, and biological determinism, new theories that concluded that education can never improve the Negro, who could only attain a fraction of the intelligence of European whites. The simultaneous development of scientific racism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the enigmatic murders of white children often thought to have been committed by African-derived brujos, led to scientific essays and editorials doubting the benefits of universal male suffrage and citizenship to blacks. Essayist Francisco Figueras, like many others, believed Cuba could never become a modern republic with democratization and inclusion of the African majority, who were cursed with lasciviousness and lack of foresight.
Despite the absence of evidence of blacks being responsible for the murders, white Cubans responded to the crisis with increasing discriminatory government and persecution of African-derived religious traditions, though religious freedom was a constitutional right. Furthermore, the Afro-Cuban middle class, best represented by Club Atenas, the preeminent social club in Havana, expressed their discontent with the lynching of blacks along with accepting the inferiority of African traditions in order to facilitate assimilation into the Cuban Republic. The conspicuous class division of Cubans of color clearly impeded the struggle for citizenship because the majority of blacks, though not African born, possessed rather recent African ancestry. Denigrations of African cultural survivals by upper class Afro-Cubans unquestionably indicate the inevitability of the return of legal discrimination in Cuba.
In summation, the battles for Afro-Latin American political inclusion in the Cauca and Cuba shared many similarities, but the Afro-Colombian experience created a more egalitarian and democratic society than that of Cuba, though both were transient. The only flaw in Colombian popular liberalism was the partition of the Liberal party due to elite reluctance to grant land reform, which would have given Afro-Caucanos full economic equality. By allying with Conservatives, some elites worked for the return to the traditional social order, culminating in the 1886 constitution, which revived limited suffrage and excluded blacks from political life. Both regions developed raceless ideologies, but the unity of Afro-Colombians in the Liberal party and the opposition’s tendency to emphasize the ties between Liberals and blacks helped afro-caucanos develop a common racial identity that Afro-Cubans lacked. Racelessness in Cuba also impeded racial unity and political involvement because Cubans of color were not supposed to form associations or political parties that defined themselves by race, due to the raceless ideology conceived by José MartÃ, which attacked forms of racial separateness through religious traditions and political organizations. Finally, the development of scientific racism which justified exclusion of blacks and other nonwhites from politics, was more influential in late 19th century and early 20th century Cuba, whereas popular liberalism began in the 1850s and ended by period before new theories of race began to play an increasingly larger role in Latin American societies.
Works Cited
Bronfman, Alejandra. “ ‘En Plena Libertad y Democracia:’ Negros Brujos and the Social Question.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 82:3 (2002): 549-87.
Ferrer, Ada. “A Raceless Nation.” In Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations, edited by John Chasteen and John Wood. Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2005.
MartÃ, José. “My Race (April 1893).” In The America of José MartÃ: Selected Writings of José MartÃ. Translated from the Spanish by Juan de OnÃs. New York: The Noonday Press, 1953.
Sanders, James E. “’Citizens of a Free People’: Popular Liberalism and Race in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Colombia.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 84:2 (2004): 277-313.
Stabb, Martin S. “The Sick Continent and Its Diagnosticians.” In Stabb, In Quest of Identity: Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas, 1890-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
Divergent Paths toward Citizenship: The Cauca and Cuba
During the second half of the 19th century in the Cauca valley of Colombia, populations of African descent became a powerful constituency of the Liberal party, seeing it as their best chance for political inclusion. Likewise, the Afro-Cuban population supported Cuban nationalists by joining the Liberation Army during Cuba’s war of independence for a chance for a chance of political inclusion. However, popular liberalism in late 19th century southwestern Colombia was more successful for Afro-Colombians than Cuba’s ideology of racelessness due to the rights conceded to them, black unity in the Liberal party and the burgeoning influence of scientific racism in Cuban domestic policies regarding race.
Though popular liberalism was more advantageous, many similarities exist between the two regions. For example, elite Liberals and nationalists craved the support of the majority of the population to seize power, which in both cases meant black support. Indeed, estimates of the black and mulatto population in the Cauca range from 34.8 percent in the 1851 census to 60.4 percent according to a local geographer. Comparable numbers for Afro-Cubans also existed, with 36 percent and 16 percent of the population as slave and free people of color. Elites and nationalists in Cuba obviously needed the political and military assistance of this majority to overthrow Conservative rule in Cauca and Spanish colonial rule with black soldiers. Although the black majority in both regions made them necessary allies, the racelessness ideology crafted by José Martà and others weakened the Afro-Cuban struggle for racial equality.
Intellectual radicals writing in the late 19th century such as MartÃ, who attacked the notion of the contamination of ancestry through slavery, also criticized discriminatory practices like segregation that isolate races, because “everything that separates man is a sin against nature. ” On the subject of Afro-Cuban political rights, Martà defended their inclusion as citizens of the new republic, declaring that the new Cuban government could not deny the rights already conceded to Afro-Cubans by the Spanish for political reasons and racial equality being necessary to establish a meritocracy. Even before MartÃ’s lofty words were penned in 1893, radical white leaders of the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878) placed free blacks into positions of local authority, freed slaves, made them soldiers, and called them citizens. In the later phases of Cuban independence, at least 60 percent of the Liberation Army was Afro-Cuban, along with 40 percent of commissioned officers.
Colombia, on the other hand, was the setting for a different form of black mobilization. In order to take control of local politics in a region where Conservative hacendados ruled, Liberals found themselves forced to abolish the slave trade and establish democratic societies to encourage afrocaucano support. Perhaps best exemplified by a Liberal priest writing to the president, “The slaves that lose their chains bring to society gratitude for the government that has lifted the yoke off them…” Thus, abolition was primarily motivated by the desire to secure black followers. Before final abolition in 1852, juntas de manumision held public ceremonies to show the blacks their debt to the Liberal party, strengthening the link between freedom and their party. Throughout second half of the 19th century, elite Liberals established democratic societies, such as the Democratic Society of Cali, where all workers were invited to learn the values of republicanism, democracy, and liberalism.
However, the urban and rural poor of the region who came to the meetings shared their own concerns, and elite Liberals were forced to meet some of their demands, including an end to old forms of deference, removing property requirements for suffrage and ending monopolies like tobacco and aguardiente, which prevented tenants and small landholders from profiting by growing tobacco and cane and terminating vagrancy laws and new taxes. Blacks in the Cauca held public demonstrations and insulted Conservative elites, unlike Afro-Cubans who could not criticize discrimination without accusations of fomenting racial division and rebellion in an officially harmonious nation.
Interestingly, like the Liberation Army of Cuba, blacks were also incorporated into Colombian national guards that defended the Liberal government in the civil wars of the 19th century. Moreover, elite Liberals also developed a raceless citizenship ideology, with citizenship superseding all other identities. In the eyes of elites, citizenship was defined by one’s willingness to defend the party. In addition, liberalism in Colombia was perpetually connected to blackness in the Conservative imaginary, like Spain’s attempt to prevent rebellion by labeling the nationalist uprising a black revolt. Nevertheless, popular liberals did not necessarily share the elitist view on race, since their numerical superiority and unity in demands for racial equality were not considered over until they received economic equality through land allocation.
The multiracial society of the Cauca must also be taken into account as well, since mestizos and Indians often supported Conservatives, thereby pitting black workers against Conservative hacendados and their followers, which fostered racial collectivity among people of African descent who defined themselves in opposition to Conservatives and mestizos. Afro-Cubans, did not have the benefit of cultivating race consciousness, since in Cuba, those of African origin were courted by multiple established political parties after achieving independence, even electing blacks as representatives for Liberals and Conservatives.
For Cuba, scientific racism’s growing influence on Cuba’s upper class hindered the battle for racial equality The various established political parties divided the black vote, preventing a united front against the burgeoning influence of Social Darwinism, positivism, and biological determinism, new theories that concluded that education can never improve the Negro, who could only attain a fraction of the intelligence of European whites. The simultaneous development of scientific racism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the enigmatic murders of white children often thought to have been committed by African-derived brujos, led to scientific essays and editorials doubting the benefits of universal male suffrage and citizenship to blacks. Essayist Francisco Figueras, like many others, believed Cuba could never become a modern republic with democratization and inclusion of the African majority, who were cursed with lasciviousness and lack of foresight.
Despite the absence of evidence of blacks being responsible for the murders, white Cubans responded to the crisis with increasing discriminatory government and persecution of African-derived religious traditions, though religious freedom was a constitutional right. Furthermore, the Afro-Cuban middle class, best represented by Club Atenas, the preeminent social club in Havana, expressed their discontent with the lynching of blacks along with accepting the inferiority of African traditions in order to facilitate assimilation into the Cuban Republic. The conspicuous class division of Cubans of color clearly impeded the struggle for citizenship because the majority of blacks, though not African born, possessed rather recent African ancestry. Denigrations of African cultural survivals by upper class Afro-Cubans unquestionably indicate the inevitability of the return of legal discrimination in Cuba.
In summation, the battles for Afro-Latin American political inclusion in the Cauca and Cuba shared many similarities, but the Afro-Colombian experience created a more egalitarian and democratic society than that of Cuba, though both were transient. The only flaw in Colombian popular liberalism was the partition of the Liberal party due to elite reluctance to grant land reform, which would have given Afro-Caucanos full economic equality. By allying with Conservatives, some elites worked for the return to the traditional social order, culminating in the 1886 constitution, which revived limited suffrage and excluded blacks from political life. Both regions developed raceless ideologies, but the unity of Afro-Colombians in the Liberal party and the opposition’s tendency to emphasize the ties between Liberals and blacks helped afro-caucanos develop a common racial identity that Afro-Cubans lacked. Racelessness in Cuba also impeded racial unity and political involvement because Cubans of color were not supposed to form associations or political parties that defined themselves by race, due to the raceless ideology conceived by José MartÃ, which attacked forms of racial separateness through religious traditions and political organizations. Finally, the development of scientific racism which justified exclusion of blacks and other nonwhites from politics, was more influential in late 19th century and early 20th century Cuba, whereas popular liberalism began in the 1850s and ended by period before new theories of race began to play an increasingly larger role in Latin American societies.
Works Cited
Bronfman, Alejandra. “ ‘En Plena Libertad y Democracia:’ Negros Brujos and the Social Question.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 82:3 (2002): 549-87.
Ferrer, Ada. “A Raceless Nation.” In Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations, edited by John Chasteen and John Wood. Lanham, MD: SR Books, 2005.
MartÃ, José. “My Race (April 1893).” In The America of José MartÃ: Selected Writings of José MartÃ. Translated from the Spanish by Juan de OnÃs. New York: The Noonday Press, 1953.
Sanders, James E. “’Citizens of a Free People’: Popular Liberalism and Race in Nineteenth-Century Southwestern Colombia.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 84:2 (2004): 277-313.
Stabb, Martin S. “The Sick Continent and Its Diagnosticians.” In Stabb, In Quest of Identity: Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas, 1890-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967.
An A Essay on Things Fall Apart
Mr. Costa loved my essays in his World Literature Class. Personally, I think he's an incredibly easy grader but whatevs. Enjoy!
Okonkwo: The Nigerian Tragic Hero
In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Achebe brilliantly portrays precolonial Ibo society. Moreover, Achebe does not present Ibo culture as superior to Western cultures and values, but wants the reader to understand the loss of one world and the creation of another. To express that destruction of the old, precolonial Nigeria, Okonkwo becomes the tragic hero. Like all tragic heroes, Okonkwo is doomed because of his flaws, which include irrational anger, violence, an insatiable ambition, hubris, and events beyond his control.
Throughout the novel, Achebe provides several examples of Okonkwo’s heroic and masculine feats. These include wrestling, which Achebe reveals when the narrator states, "At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all of the land."(Achebe 27) Achieving masculine feats such as wrestling increases one’s status in Ibo society. In addition, Okonkwo also excels in war, another masculine and heroic accomplishment, which is why he sends the message of war to the enemies of Umuofia.
Furthermore, Okonkwo rises in social class because of his own hard work and determination, another admirable and heroic virtue. His idle father left nothing for Okonkwo, but he gains his own yam farm and eventually becomes wealthy by owning many yam farms and wives. Indeed, an older man of the village astutely observes, “Looking at a king’s mouth, one would never think he sucked his mother’s breast” (26). Okonkwo’s rise from poverty further illustrates his heroic virtues because all Aristotelian tragic heroes must undergo peripeteia, or a reversal of fortune caused by one of their flaws, or hamartia. In this case, his flaw is his ambition. His fear of being a powerless, worthless man like his father motivates him to work relentlessly to appear a man of worth. Perhaps the ultimate expression of Okonkwo’s ambition is his murder of Ikemefuna, the captive from another village that he sees as his own son because “he was afraid of being thought weak” (61).
Irrational rage is another significant flaw. Okonkwo mistreats his wives, beats his children, especially Nwoye, the oldest son, and even strikes his wife during the Week of Peace for not cooking his meal. He does not use his anger wisely and beats Nwoye when he sees signs of laziness (or characteristics of his father) in him (13).
Besides, he does not show any emotion because he perceives it as unmanly, meaning Okonkwo is not balanced. Before Ikemefuna’s death, Okonkwo treats him “as he treated everyone else – with a heavy hand” (28). He could not even show affection to the people he loves, including his daughter Ezinma. By ignoring his unconscious feminine mind, Okonkwo murders Ikemefuna in front of the other men and shows no remorse, even after his friend Obierika says “What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families” (67). His callous murder of the boy who calls him father (28) and the manner in which he replies to Obierika’s warning reveals his apathy.
Indubitably, the classic flaw of hubris also plays a role in Okonkwo’s downfall. An endemic fault in tragic heroes from Odysseus to Oedipus, Okonkwo is another arrogant hero. When Osugo, a man with no title comes to the kindred meeting, Okonkwo states, “This meeting is for men” (26). The oldest man present who reminds him of his humble origins later rebukes him. After achieving success despite early disadvantages, he became exceedingly arrogant, which is one of his reasons for abusing Nwoye when he detects laziness in the boy.
In addition, Okonkwo faces forces beyond his control. The European colonizers and Christian missionaries inevitably triumph and initially place Iboland under indirect British rule. Therefore, Okonkwo’s conflict with the European colonizers is rather reminiscent of the battle between fate and free will in that he and Oedipus fight losing battles. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia after seven years of exile, he hopes for another reversal of fortune, which can be assumed from the text because he hopes to use his beautiful daughters to arrange marriages that benefit him. However, Okonkwo finds the white European missionaries and the District Commissioner who show no respect for traditional Ibo religion and force Christianity on them, which strengthens divisions in Ibo society as outcasts and the youth begin to convert. Comparable to Okonkwo’s struggle against European imperialism, Oedipus’ attempt to evade the prophecy demonstrates the fallacy of opposing the unavoidable. Both tragic heroes attempt in vain to aspire to great things in a new world. The old Umuofia no longer exists and nothing can bring it back, even Okonkwo’s valiant attempts. When Okonkwo endeavors to obtain support for a possible rebellion by killing the court messenger who came to stop their meeting, the crowd asks, “Why did he do it” (205)? It is at that moment Okonkwo realizes there is no way to restore the past and walks away from the crowd.
Naturally, Okonkwo could not live in colonial Umuofia and commits suicide. The irony in his suicide is great because the only people who can bury his corpse are the British and their Christian servants, the same people he resists. He also knows suicide is an abomination, which suggests Okonkwo did not even want his fellow villagers to touch his corpse. This appalling death brings about catharsis or a release of emotion and sympathy for the tragic hero, which concurs with the Aristotelian tragedy. Thus, Okonkwo displays all of the characteristics of a tragic hero according to Aristotle and his flaws cause his downfall.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
Okonkwo: The Nigerian Tragic Hero
In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Achebe brilliantly portrays precolonial Ibo society. Moreover, Achebe does not present Ibo culture as superior to Western cultures and values, but wants the reader to understand the loss of one world and the creation of another. To express that destruction of the old, precolonial Nigeria, Okonkwo becomes the tragic hero. Like all tragic heroes, Okonkwo is doomed because of his flaws, which include irrational anger, violence, an insatiable ambition, hubris, and events beyond his control.
Throughout the novel, Achebe provides several examples of Okonkwo’s heroic and masculine feats. These include wrestling, which Achebe reveals when the narrator states, "At an early age he had achieved fame as the greatest wrestler in all of the land."(Achebe 27) Achieving masculine feats such as wrestling increases one’s status in Ibo society. In addition, Okonkwo also excels in war, another masculine and heroic accomplishment, which is why he sends the message of war to the enemies of Umuofia.
Furthermore, Okonkwo rises in social class because of his own hard work and determination, another admirable and heroic virtue. His idle father left nothing for Okonkwo, but he gains his own yam farm and eventually becomes wealthy by owning many yam farms and wives. Indeed, an older man of the village astutely observes, “Looking at a king’s mouth, one would never think he sucked his mother’s breast” (26). Okonkwo’s rise from poverty further illustrates his heroic virtues because all Aristotelian tragic heroes must undergo peripeteia, or a reversal of fortune caused by one of their flaws, or hamartia. In this case, his flaw is his ambition. His fear of being a powerless, worthless man like his father motivates him to work relentlessly to appear a man of worth. Perhaps the ultimate expression of Okonkwo’s ambition is his murder of Ikemefuna, the captive from another village that he sees as his own son because “he was afraid of being thought weak” (61).
Irrational rage is another significant flaw. Okonkwo mistreats his wives, beats his children, especially Nwoye, the oldest son, and even strikes his wife during the Week of Peace for not cooking his meal. He does not use his anger wisely and beats Nwoye when he sees signs of laziness (or characteristics of his father) in him (13).
Besides, he does not show any emotion because he perceives it as unmanly, meaning Okonkwo is not balanced. Before Ikemefuna’s death, Okonkwo treats him “as he treated everyone else – with a heavy hand” (28). He could not even show affection to the people he loves, including his daughter Ezinma. By ignoring his unconscious feminine mind, Okonkwo murders Ikemefuna in front of the other men and shows no remorse, even after his friend Obierika says “What you have done will not please the Earth. It is the kind of action for which the goddess wipes out whole families” (67). His callous murder of the boy who calls him father (28) and the manner in which he replies to Obierika’s warning reveals his apathy.
Indubitably, the classic flaw of hubris also plays a role in Okonkwo’s downfall. An endemic fault in tragic heroes from Odysseus to Oedipus, Okonkwo is another arrogant hero. When Osugo, a man with no title comes to the kindred meeting, Okonkwo states, “This meeting is for men” (26). The oldest man present who reminds him of his humble origins later rebukes him. After achieving success despite early disadvantages, he became exceedingly arrogant, which is one of his reasons for abusing Nwoye when he detects laziness in the boy.
In addition, Okonkwo faces forces beyond his control. The European colonizers and Christian missionaries inevitably triumph and initially place Iboland under indirect British rule. Therefore, Okonkwo’s conflict with the European colonizers is rather reminiscent of the battle between fate and free will in that he and Oedipus fight losing battles. When Okonkwo returns to Umuofia after seven years of exile, he hopes for another reversal of fortune, which can be assumed from the text because he hopes to use his beautiful daughters to arrange marriages that benefit him. However, Okonkwo finds the white European missionaries and the District Commissioner who show no respect for traditional Ibo religion and force Christianity on them, which strengthens divisions in Ibo society as outcasts and the youth begin to convert. Comparable to Okonkwo’s struggle against European imperialism, Oedipus’ attempt to evade the prophecy demonstrates the fallacy of opposing the unavoidable. Both tragic heroes attempt in vain to aspire to great things in a new world. The old Umuofia no longer exists and nothing can bring it back, even Okonkwo’s valiant attempts. When Okonkwo endeavors to obtain support for a possible rebellion by killing the court messenger who came to stop their meeting, the crowd asks, “Why did he do it” (205)? It is at that moment Okonkwo realizes there is no way to restore the past and walks away from the crowd.
Naturally, Okonkwo could not live in colonial Umuofia and commits suicide. The irony in his suicide is great because the only people who can bury his corpse are the British and their Christian servants, the same people he resists. He also knows suicide is an abomination, which suggests Okonkwo did not even want his fellow villagers to touch his corpse. This appalling death brings about catharsis or a release of emotion and sympathy for the tragic hero, which concurs with the Aristotelian tragedy. Thus, Okonkwo displays all of the characteristics of a tragic hero according to Aristotle and his flaws cause his downfall.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. Things Fall Apart: A Novel. New York: Anchor Books, 1994.
An A- Essay on Colombian History
I got an A- on this paper which was graded by my favorite French-Canadian TA. She is amazing! Was it deserved or interesting? Also, I was unfortunately unable to find out how to show the footnotes on this essay...
Race, Class, and Postcolonial Legacies in Gran Colombia
People of mixed racial backgrounds, often called pardos in Spanish America, along with enslaved people of African descent, comprised a majority in Venezuela and in the Magdalena department of Gran Colombia along the Caribbean coast. Despite their numerical strength, pardos failed to consolidate themselves as a group and push for equality in both public and domestic spheres of Gran Colombian society. Instead, the pardos, who contributed their lives through military service in the independence struggles, continued to serve the descendants of the former Creole elite, who retained their positions of leadership. The mixed-race population included a people deeply divided by class and occupational differences, which unquestionably hindered the development of a common racial and class identity.
One cause of the absence of class and racial identity among pardos was their resistance to being affiliated with slavery and the enslaved African population. Since the colonial period, free blacks and mulattoes often migrated to cities and towns to work as artisans or join various militias to avoid farm labor and its negative connotation. Therefore, pardos preferred an urban life where they worked as butchers, tailors, barbers, masons, blacksmiths, and carpenters and in local militias. Pardo reluctance to associate with black slaves directly contradicted the claims of Caracas’s Creole elite, who associated pardos with “the dark people of Africa. ” Obviously, this was not the case for the majority of pardos because a multiracial background automatically African-born slaves, who were fully black.
Thus, pardos, who were born in the Americas, looked to Spain for their cultural and political aspirations instead of Spain. Similarly, gens de couleur in the French Caribbean carried similar attitudes about their identity and relationship with black slaves. The defeat of Andre Rigaud, the Haitian mulatto by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Pelage’s resistance to cultivateur uprisings in Guadeloupe illustrate this rift between blacks and mulattoes. Indeed, some biracial people in the French Caribbean worked as managers on sugar plantations, joined colonial militias to capture runaway slaves or owned their own plantations.
During the early post-colonial period, Gran Colombia’s pardo population exhibited the same ambivalence and differing views on slavery and racism in Cartagena, with no significant calls for emancipation. Unfortunately, this partition of Afro-Colombians left pardos without a key ally, the slave masses whose significant numbers could have given them leverage in dealing with the white power structure.
In addition, pardos as a group within themselves lacked a collective racial identity, causing Padilla’s endeavors to mobilize the mulattoes of Cartagena against bolivaristas like Montilla and the Creole elite in the city to fail. The integration of the military encouraged a burgeoning sense of equality with whites among pardos along with Gran Colombia’s constitution avoidance of the former colonial castas, only referring to slaves and Indians as ethnic minorities. Furthermore, the disproportionate number of women in cities such as Cartagena was conducive to interracial marriages and relationships, whose progeny possessed an ambiguous racial position, caught between their mixed mothers and white fathers. Consequently, many publicly identified themselves as citizens, especially because until 1827 soldiers could also vote, meaning pardo soldiers could vote regardless of literacy, property, or independent trade requirements. This absence of racial solidarity inhibited attempts to challenge the system because others were content with the practice of the promise of citizenship proffered by the Constitution.
Moreover, pardo mobilization was unsuccessful because of manipulation by Spanish and Creole leaders in the late colonial and early post-colonial periods of Colombian history. Pardos, free blacks, and enslaved men were encouraged to fight for both royalists and the liberation armies. Promises of abolition and citizenship enticed them, and the language of the liberators equated Spanish colonialism with slavery, another stimulus for blacks and pardos to join their cause. In fact, liberation in Nueva Granada would have been impossible without the participation of pardos and others of African descent, the majority of Venezuela and coastal Colombia. On the other hand, during the colonial period, the Spanish sought pardos for military service in the militias. Due to the desire of peninsulares to hold all public and growing Creole demands for public office, the Spaniards used the pardo militias as a loyal military force that would protect Spanish interests and rule in the colony because they were protected by the military. Of course pardos also received protection from fueros, or military courts that oversaw the behavior of pardos instead of the city courts.
However, pardos in the military began to disdain the mechanical professions, creating a schism within the already deeply divided pardo group. The Creoles of Caracas unsurprisingly hated seeing the pardos “ready to speak up for themselves and even hurl abuse, simply because they have a red badge. ” These pardos however, did not work as a corporate body for citizenship, an end to Creole domination of the government, and the absence of schools for themselves. Their claim to pretensions of status and respect increased their arrogance, but separated mixed-raced people by profession, with soldiers considering themselves superior to artisans and laborers on the farms, though all were essentially members of the working class. The lasting influence of this persisted through the post-independence period as well.
During the independence wars, pardo movements for equality in public and private dimensions of society always incited fear of pardocracia, a fear of pardo rule through a Haitian-style revolution along the Caribbean coast. Connections with the Haitian Revolution sowed further disagreement, as pardos did not share the same opinion on Haiti. Though Bolivar was successfully liberated the coast of Venezuela and Colombia by receiving soldiers, arms, and money from Petion’s Republic, Haiti was not recognized by Gran Colombia. Interestingly, Padilla’s calls for mobilization of pardos in Cartagena mentioned nothing of Haiti, a country where he spent time with Bolivar preparing for the imminent liberation of Venezuela. Fear of pardocracia also motivated Bolivar to appoint Montilla, a former royalist, to the governorship of Cartagena and the Magdalena province instead of Padilla, who always supported Bolivar, due to his fear of black rule. Yet Haiti did not inspire Padilla. Likewise, the mulatto Manuel Piar’s challenge of Bolivar’s supremacy in Venezuela in 1817 was also correlated with the Haitian Revolution, because Piar allegedly organized blacks against whites, resulting in his execution. Fear of similar extreme reprisals likely influenced the decisions of pardos in Cartagena who decided not to support Padilla.
However, Padilla’s movement in Cartagena also failed to rouse the people of Cartagena because of its focus on military and political issues and its unpopularity with the people. Many of the soldiers in Cartagena’s army were Indians, pardos, and blacks conscripted from their villages or artisans from the city like the carpenter Jose Escudero, whose arrest Padilla ordered for disobedience. Furthermore, political and military issues considered important by Padilla such as Bolivar’s plan to change the Gran Colombian constitution made little difference to pardo artisans and black slaves in the city. Besides, Cartagena was already in decline from destruction during the war and isolated from the rest of the Magdalena department so Padilla’s attempts to organize them were doomed to fail because the pardo citizenry saw little benefit in joining his cause with little chance of success. When the chance of success and the unpopularity of the military were added together, pardo artisans in the city realized they had nothing to gain. Thus, intra-class differences among the pardo population prevented Padilla from assembling the pardo population.
In summation, pardo advances in Gran Colombian society were hindered by a dearth of common class and racial consciousness among members of the biracial population. The partition of Afro-Colombians into pardo and black, free and slave, and the further separation of pardos into militia units and artisans buried the path to commonality from the colonial to post-colonial periods. As elsewhere in Latin America, the promise and practice of nation prevented a truly democratic and representative government for all its populace.
Works Cited
Blanchard, Peter, “The Language of Liberation: Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence.”
Hispanic American Historical Review, 82:3 (2002): 83-107.
City Council of Caracas, “Pardos in the Colony and Their Place,” In John Lynch, Latin American
Revolutions, 1808-1826: Old and New World Origins. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994.
Davis, David Brion, “Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions,” In The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, edited by David P. Geggus. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Dubois, Laurent, “The Promise of Revolution: Saint-Domingue and the Struggle for Autonomy
In Guadeloupe, 1797-1802,” In The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World,
edited by David P. Geggus. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Helg, Aline, “Simon Bolivar and the Spectre of Pardocracia: Jose Padilla in Post-Independence
Cartagena.” Journal of Latin American Studies 35 (2003): 447-471.
Race, Class, and Postcolonial Legacies in Gran Colombia
People of mixed racial backgrounds, often called pardos in Spanish America, along with enslaved people of African descent, comprised a majority in Venezuela and in the Magdalena department of Gran Colombia along the Caribbean coast. Despite their numerical strength, pardos failed to consolidate themselves as a group and push for equality in both public and domestic spheres of Gran Colombian society. Instead, the pardos, who contributed their lives through military service in the independence struggles, continued to serve the descendants of the former Creole elite, who retained their positions of leadership. The mixed-race population included a people deeply divided by class and occupational differences, which unquestionably hindered the development of a common racial and class identity.
One cause of the absence of class and racial identity among pardos was their resistance to being affiliated with slavery and the enslaved African population. Since the colonial period, free blacks and mulattoes often migrated to cities and towns to work as artisans or join various militias to avoid farm labor and its negative connotation. Therefore, pardos preferred an urban life where they worked as butchers, tailors, barbers, masons, blacksmiths, and carpenters and in local militias. Pardo reluctance to associate with black slaves directly contradicted the claims of Caracas’s Creole elite, who associated pardos with “the dark people of Africa. ” Obviously, this was not the case for the majority of pardos because a multiracial background automatically African-born slaves, who were fully black.
Thus, pardos, who were born in the Americas, looked to Spain for their cultural and political aspirations instead of Spain. Similarly, gens de couleur in the French Caribbean carried similar attitudes about their identity and relationship with black slaves. The defeat of Andre Rigaud, the Haitian mulatto by Toussaint L’Ouverture and Pelage’s resistance to cultivateur uprisings in Guadeloupe illustrate this rift between blacks and mulattoes. Indeed, some biracial people in the French Caribbean worked as managers on sugar plantations, joined colonial militias to capture runaway slaves or owned their own plantations.
During the early post-colonial period, Gran Colombia’s pardo population exhibited the same ambivalence and differing views on slavery and racism in Cartagena, with no significant calls for emancipation. Unfortunately, this partition of Afro-Colombians left pardos without a key ally, the slave masses whose significant numbers could have given them leverage in dealing with the white power structure.
In addition, pardos as a group within themselves lacked a collective racial identity, causing Padilla’s endeavors to mobilize the mulattoes of Cartagena against bolivaristas like Montilla and the Creole elite in the city to fail. The integration of the military encouraged a burgeoning sense of equality with whites among pardos along with Gran Colombia’s constitution avoidance of the former colonial castas, only referring to slaves and Indians as ethnic minorities. Furthermore, the disproportionate number of women in cities such as Cartagena was conducive to interracial marriages and relationships, whose progeny possessed an ambiguous racial position, caught between their mixed mothers and white fathers. Consequently, many publicly identified themselves as citizens, especially because until 1827 soldiers could also vote, meaning pardo soldiers could vote regardless of literacy, property, or independent trade requirements. This absence of racial solidarity inhibited attempts to challenge the system because others were content with the practice of the promise of citizenship proffered by the Constitution.
Moreover, pardo mobilization was unsuccessful because of manipulation by Spanish and Creole leaders in the late colonial and early post-colonial periods of Colombian history. Pardos, free blacks, and enslaved men were encouraged to fight for both royalists and the liberation armies. Promises of abolition and citizenship enticed them, and the language of the liberators equated Spanish colonialism with slavery, another stimulus for blacks and pardos to join their cause. In fact, liberation in Nueva Granada would have been impossible without the participation of pardos and others of African descent, the majority of Venezuela and coastal Colombia. On the other hand, during the colonial period, the Spanish sought pardos for military service in the militias. Due to the desire of peninsulares to hold all public and growing Creole demands for public office, the Spaniards used the pardo militias as a loyal military force that would protect Spanish interests and rule in the colony because they were protected by the military. Of course pardos also received protection from fueros, or military courts that oversaw the behavior of pardos instead of the city courts.
However, pardos in the military began to disdain the mechanical professions, creating a schism within the already deeply divided pardo group. The Creoles of Caracas unsurprisingly hated seeing the pardos “ready to speak up for themselves and even hurl abuse, simply because they have a red badge. ” These pardos however, did not work as a corporate body for citizenship, an end to Creole domination of the government, and the absence of schools for themselves. Their claim to pretensions of status and respect increased their arrogance, but separated mixed-raced people by profession, with soldiers considering themselves superior to artisans and laborers on the farms, though all were essentially members of the working class. The lasting influence of this persisted through the post-independence period as well.
During the independence wars, pardo movements for equality in public and private dimensions of society always incited fear of pardocracia, a fear of pardo rule through a Haitian-style revolution along the Caribbean coast. Connections with the Haitian Revolution sowed further disagreement, as pardos did not share the same opinion on Haiti. Though Bolivar was successfully liberated the coast of Venezuela and Colombia by receiving soldiers, arms, and money from Petion’s Republic, Haiti was not recognized by Gran Colombia. Interestingly, Padilla’s calls for mobilization of pardos in Cartagena mentioned nothing of Haiti, a country where he spent time with Bolivar preparing for the imminent liberation of Venezuela. Fear of pardocracia also motivated Bolivar to appoint Montilla, a former royalist, to the governorship of Cartagena and the Magdalena province instead of Padilla, who always supported Bolivar, due to his fear of black rule. Yet Haiti did not inspire Padilla. Likewise, the mulatto Manuel Piar’s challenge of Bolivar’s supremacy in Venezuela in 1817 was also correlated with the Haitian Revolution, because Piar allegedly organized blacks against whites, resulting in his execution. Fear of similar extreme reprisals likely influenced the decisions of pardos in Cartagena who decided not to support Padilla.
However, Padilla’s movement in Cartagena also failed to rouse the people of Cartagena because of its focus on military and political issues and its unpopularity with the people. Many of the soldiers in Cartagena’s army were Indians, pardos, and blacks conscripted from their villages or artisans from the city like the carpenter Jose Escudero, whose arrest Padilla ordered for disobedience. Furthermore, political and military issues considered important by Padilla such as Bolivar’s plan to change the Gran Colombian constitution made little difference to pardo artisans and black slaves in the city. Besides, Cartagena was already in decline from destruction during the war and isolated from the rest of the Magdalena department so Padilla’s attempts to organize them were doomed to fail because the pardo citizenry saw little benefit in joining his cause with little chance of success. When the chance of success and the unpopularity of the military were added together, pardo artisans in the city realized they had nothing to gain. Thus, intra-class differences among the pardo population prevented Padilla from assembling the pardo population.
In summation, pardo advances in Gran Colombian society were hindered by a dearth of common class and racial consciousness among members of the biracial population. The partition of Afro-Colombians into pardo and black, free and slave, and the further separation of pardos into militia units and artisans buried the path to commonality from the colonial to post-colonial periods. As elsewhere in Latin America, the promise and practice of nation prevented a truly democratic and representative government for all its populace.
Works Cited
Blanchard, Peter, “The Language of Liberation: Slave Voices in the Wars of Independence.”
Hispanic American Historical Review, 82:3 (2002): 83-107.
City Council of Caracas, “Pardos in the Colony and Their Place,” In John Lynch, Latin American
Revolutions, 1808-1826: Old and New World Origins. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1994.
Davis, David Brion, “Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions,” In The Impact of the
Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World, edited by David P. Geggus. Columbia: University
of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Dubois, Laurent, “The Promise of Revolution: Saint-Domingue and the Struggle for Autonomy
In Guadeloupe, 1797-1802,” In The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World,
edited by David P. Geggus. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Helg, Aline, “Simon Bolivar and the Spectre of Pardocracia: Jose Padilla in Post-Independence
Cartagena.” Journal of Latin American Studies 35 (2003): 447-471.
Cosmic Words for Mental Therapy: Another A Essay in African History
Here is my final in History 377, Africa from 1500-1870. Did it deserve the A I received?
Europeans in West and South Africa: Trade versus Settlement
European influences on African societies in West and South Africa differed fundamentally in that Europeans actually settled in South Africa in large numbers. The European presence in both Western and Southern Africa marked a significant change in African societies by providing them direct trade with Europe, industrial goods, and the horrors of the Atlantic Slave Trade. In South Africa, the actual physical presence of Europeans also brought direct trade, industrial goods, but differed in that the climate and people of the Cape facilitated the Dutch East India Company settlement and European expansion because of the decentralized nature of Khoikhoi communities and nearby Bantu-speaking groups. West Africa, on the other hand, was not an enticing area for European colonists because of the prevalence of malaria and other tropical diseases to which whites were very vulnerable. Thus, large white settlement made European influences in South Africa very direct and confrontational with regards to relations with Africans prior to the rise of imperialism.
One of the greatest differences between European influence in West and South Africa was the large and burgeoning Dutch East India Company settlement of Cape Town, which gave Europeans a permanent and growing presence in Africa. As the colony expanded beyond the Cape through migrations of voortrekkers, Europeans directly fought against local African populations and were able to make significant progress because of the decentralized nature of local African societies near the Cape.[1] Indeed, the Khoikhoi and San who occupied the land near the Cape were easily defeated or incorporated by early Afrikaners despite their numbers. The Khoikhoi pastoralists in the Cape adopted cattle herding from Bantu-speaking peoples to the north but lacked the political centralization to put up a united front against the encroachment of Afrikaners from the coast.[2] After the destabilization of Khoikhoi chiefdoms and San communities, both groups were forced into indentured servitude for whites, began to incorporate cultural elements of Afrikaners, adopted their language, and converted to Christianity.[3] This process of assimilation and intermarriage led to the formation of Cape Coloreds and Griqua communities that eventually resembled white South Africans on the frontiers of the Cape colony who also practiced semi-nomadic pastoralism.[4] Thus the impact of Europeans near the Cape was the gradual elimination of pre-existing social organizations such as the chiefdoms of the Khoikhoi and the formation of a new multiracial society with whites on the top of the social ladder. Armed bands of Griqua and whites also roamed the frontiers of the colony, often fighting with African groups in the process.[5]
Likewise in West Africa, communities of European settlement developed and often included racially mixed populations that resembled Europeans in several ways. For example, biracial and westernized blacks in coastal West Africa often identified with Europe and communities of Creoles in Sierra Leone joined European missionaries in spreading Christianity. Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a famous Yoruba recaptive, became the first African bishop of the Anglican Church and established African missionary centers in Nigeria.[6] The establishment of a college to train African clergymen at Fourah Bay in Freetown illustrates the high level of admiration and acceptance of European influences among Creoles.[7] Thus many of the biracial and culturally westernized West Africans such as Crowther supported colonialism since they hoped for colonial rule to give them political power.[8] Unlike the Cape of South Africa, however, the Creoles and other European-influenced societies lacked the power to actually pursue a similar semi-nomadic lifestyle and appropriate land from other African societies like the Griqua and trekboers. Indeed, land was mostly not available for expropriation to Europeans and biracial traders and missionaries since West African states were strong enough to repel European invaders. Prior to the use of quinine to treat malaria and the invention of modern repeating rifles in the late 19th century, African kingdoms could prevent European conquest and settlement in the interior.[9] This of course made European influence prior to this time centered on trade instead of colonialism and settlement since the region’s climate and centralized states were able to thwart any attempts to do so. Thus, like the Cape Coloreds and Griqua of South Africa, European influences in West Africa included miscegenation and the rise of intermediate racial groups in what would eventually result in colonial racial hierarchies, such as the privileged position of Cape Coloreds over black South Africans in apartheid South Africa.
European influences in South Africa past the Cape impacted Bantu-speaking communities as well. Due to the growing independence of Afrikaners, who by 1679 were mostly free burghers no longer attached to the Dutch East India Company, many had moved beyond the Cape and interacted with larger and more centralized Bantu-speaking peoples.[10] When Britain took control of the colony in 1805, many Afrikaners and Griqua left the Cape to escape British rule, bringing indentured servants, slaves imported from Asia and other areas of Africa, and their herds of cattle and sheep.[11] The voortrekkers established independent republics such as Orange Free State, Transvaal and formed alliances with certain African groups to defeat others. For example, the 1838 Battle of Blood River fought between voortrekkers led by Andries Pretorius against Zulu king Dingane, ended in a triumphant victory for the Afrikaners and the establishment of the Natalia Republic, later incorporated by the British in the 1840s. However, the eventual triumph over Dingane was only possible because of Zulu leader Mpande’s alliance with Pretorius. European settlers also influenced the Xhosa peoples against whom they waged several wars. For instance, the Xhosa, closest to the migrating Europeans, quickly found themselves entangled in a struggle over land and resources. Both trekboers and the Xhosa relied on agriculture and cattle, leading to conflicts over control of land and cattle raiding on both sides.[12] The British were able to successfully subdue and incorporate the Xhosa into British-administered South Africa after several wars, leading to the Xhosa Cattle Killing in 1856-1858, a millenialist movement called for by prophetess Nongqawuse who believed sacrificing all cattle would drive the white settlers away and bring prosperity back to the Xhosa. Obviously a mass movement that demanded the destruction of their means of sustenance left the Xhosa more impoverished and totally dependent on white settlers for relief. [13] Clearly the European influences on the Xhosa, such as the adoption of firearms in conflicts with the British and missionary activity, impacted Xhosa religion, land possession, and political independence. Other African groups, such as the Zulu under Shaka and the Matabele under Mzilikazi became militarized societies that formed age-based military regiments such as the amabutho.[14] Afrikaners and European colonists, to justify their own settlements in South Africa, used the mfecane theory that posits that the depopulation of some areas of South Africa during the 1820s was caused by Zulu expansion and conflicts between different Africans for land and resources. However, the militarization of Zulu and Matabele societies was partly motivated by expanding European settlement in the interior and the ensuing wars for land between the various parties. Unlike South Africa, where the slave trade was minimal the Atlantic Slave trade intensified armed conflicts because the need for arms to defend a state against potential rivals meant trading in slaves. In order to acquire slaves to receive guns from European traders, African states had to wage war against neighboring peoples. The violent cycle of guns and other industrial goods for slaves in order to legitimize and expand kingdoms led to warlordism in some areas, where legitimate rulers were easily overthrown by African slave traders who acquired guns. On the other hand, some centralized states arose because of the slave trade, such as Dahomey and Oyo, who were able to maintain their power by controlling the coastal trade routes with Europeans.[15]
Ultimately both West Africa and South Africa succumbed to European imperialism by the end of the 19th century. The racist nature of Afrikaner nationalism and their desire to separate themselves from black South Africans along with British colonialism and the discovery of diamond mines led to massive exploitation of Africans. In West Africa, British and French encroachment from the coast led to European rule in the entire region whereas South Africa experienced imperialism from Afrikaners and Britain, whose mining companies sought British rule.
[1] Neil Kodesh, “South Africa: The Arrival of the Dutch,” 11/29/2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Neil Kodesh, “Abolition and Legitimate Trade,” 11/10/2010.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Neil Kodesh, “The Scramble for Africa,” 12/13/2010.
[10] Neil Kodesh, “The Arrival of the British and European expansion in South Africa,” 11/31/2010.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Neil Kodesh, “The Zulu and the Mfecane,” 12/3/2010.
[15] Neil Kodesh, “Oyo, Benin and Dahomey,” 10/25/2010.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)