Gerardo Fulleda León’s theatre values human dignity above all else. In his most recent piece, La pasión desobediente (2014), the voice of 19th-century writer Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda defiantly foretells the leveling of inequalities rooted in gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, and nationality. His earlier colonial-era plays Ruandi (1977), Azogue (1979), Plácido (1982), and Chago de Guisa (1989) reclaim the humanity of black and mulatto protagonists who journey – literally and metaphorically – from the plantation to the palenque on quests to freely be who they know themselves to be. In the whole of Fulleda’s work, the celebration of the humanity of his protagonists is always also a celebration of their Cubanness.
Fulleda’s forward-looking historical theatre is idealistic and melancholic, activist and meditative, imaginative and realist, ethereal and corporeal. Poetry and song add mystical dimensions that bring into relief the crude realities lived by Afro-Cuban protagonists in the era of slavery. Ruandi, Azogue, Plácido, and Chago’s dreams bring the uniqueness of their personhood to the fore. These texts fight for the common good of oppressed groups while upholding the value of individuality, presenting a vision of liberty that is simultaneously egalitarian and personal.
I recently completed a translation of Ruandi (in English, Rwandi), Fulleda’s only children’s play to date. The task presented difficult choices. Should the translation cover its footprints, so to speak, to read as if it had been originally composed in the target language? Or should the translation advertise itself, highlight its foreignness, remind target-language audiences that what they are accessing is a linguistic and cultural context other than their own? And if so, to what degree?
Ruandi tells the saga of an enslaved boy’s escape from a plantation and journey toward a palenque. While Ruandi’s drive for freedom is certainly a story of fundamental human rights, the play displays its Cubanness through poetic, culturally-specific language linking the island’s flora and fauna to Afro-Cuban spirituality. Translating Ruandi risks effacing the play’s cultural specificity. Rendered in English for a U.S. audience, the translated text inevitably evokes comparisons to the history of slavery in this country, diminishing its Cubanness and emphasizing the universals embedded in its celebration of the human spirit.
The first time the word palenque is used in the play, 11-year-old Ruandi is on the plantation where he grew up talking with Abuela Minga, who isn’t really his grandmother, lamenting the master’s decision to send him to Havana as punishment for supposed inattention to the oxen he was tasked with watching:
RUANDI. Abuela, abuela Minga. ¿Y por qué no me llevas entonces al palenque? ¿Eh? Mientras tanto, ¿eh? Allá en las lomas, donde me cuentas que hay tanta gente como nosotros.
RWANDI. Grandma. Grandma Minga. Why don’t you take me to the palenque, then? Huh? In the meantime, huh? Up there in the hills, where you say there are lots of people like us.
If we were going from Spanish to Portuguese, the word quilombo would fit well. But English doesn’t have parallel term, and translating palenque as “community of runaway slaves in the hinterlands” certainly breaks the rhythm and tone of the text. Because the meaning of “palenque” can be easily inferred from the context of the conversation, I decided it should be left in Spanish. The word reminds English-language audiences that the play has a specific cultural-linguistic context, presenting ‘the foreign as foreign,’ as theorist Antoine Berman endorses. In contrast, the words ingenio and finca both appear as “plantation” in my translation. Admittedly, the word plantation conjures images of cotton in the American South where there should instead be images of sugar cane in the Caribbean. Nevertheless, “plantation” appropriately signifies a large agricultural property built on slave labor and carries apt connotations of racial exploitation and suffering that may perhaps touch English-speaking audiences more intimately than ingenio or finca.
Ruandi is filled with poetic word play and interpolated poems, where the text’s effect on its audience depends less on the meaning of individual words than it does on the tone and rhythm of phrases. As he journeys alone through the forest, Ruandi encounters a series of fantastical obstacles and allies including a troubadour guard dog, a lecturing owl, a white scorpion, menacing vultures, an encouraging jicotea, and a talking rock eager for adventure. One of these Odyssean encounters is with a Ceiba, a tree Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions associate with metaphysical power. In the dark Ruandi is frightened by the Ceiba, who he sees as a hundred-armed monster trying to put out his fire and punish him for lighting it. Grandma Minga’s spirit prompts Ruandi to sing to overcome his fears. He sings:
No quiere dormir la Luna The Moon does not want to sleep
sobre lo alto de un pino. On top of the far barren hill.
Quiere dormir en tu almohada She wants to sleep on your pillow,
donde no se sienta el frío. Safe from the cold air’s chill.
No quiere cruzar la noche She doesn’t want to spend the night
despierta entre las nubes. Awake high up in the air.
Quiere jugar en tu pelo She wants to be on your blue bed
sobre las sábanas azules. And play with her light on your hair.
No quiere irse callada She doesn’t want to leave quietly
cuando en el monte amanece. When morning arrives in the forest.
Quiere quedarse en tu pecho She wants to stay in your heart
y soñar que allí florece. And dream there where it is warmest.
La Ceiba monstruosa se convierte The monstrous Ceiba turns into
en lo que es, una simple ceiba. what it is, a simple ceiba tree.
Desaparece abuela Minga. Grandma Minga disappears
There is inherent pleasure in rhythm, rhyme, and repetition. The sound patterns amplify the comforting effect of the poetic images in Ruandi’s song, and I have altered the meaning of words and phrases in favor of prioritizing similarity of poetic structures in translation.
Surviving a near-deadly scorpion sting and then almost drowning, Ruandi makes it across the river and safely to the palenque, leaving behind the sound of barking dogs in pursuit and walking toward welcoming drumbeat ahead. The play concludes by suggesting that Ruandi will return from the palenque to live among us once again in a utopian future defined by racial harmony. Following thirteen utterances in the future tense, the play’s final lines ambiguously recalibrate this racial utopia using the present perfect:
POETA. Y todos sabrán que no fue inútil su viaje. Pues Ruandi ha regresado, y entre nosotros … ¡vive libre!
The most literal interpretation is also the politically-expedient one for the context of the play’s original production in the late 1970s: that is, that the Revolution’s gains toward social equality in the 1960s produced the utopian circumstances of Ruandi’s return, which has indeed occurred. However, an alternative interpretation reads a parenthetically implied “Y entonces dirán” in place of the word “Pues,” locating Ruandi’s return in a yet-hoped-for future.
In considering toward which interpretation the translation should lean, we must remember that Cuban cultural and racial politics in the 1970s were shaped by the repressions on freedom of expression of the so-called Quinquenio Gris or Five-Year Gray Period. It would have been anathema to the Revolution to contradict the regime’s claim that it “eradicated” racial discrimination from Cuban society during the 1960s. In this political context, the 1970s saw a proliferation of cultural work set in the colonial era that indirectly denounced repressions, inequalities, and fanaticism under the Revolution, two foundational examples being Titón’s film Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (1972) and Abelardo Estorino’s play La dolorosa historia del amor secreto de don José Jacinto Milanés (1973). Viewed in this light, Ruandi’s conclusion does not celebrate Revolutionary triumphs over racism but instead prompts audiences to measure persisting racial inequalities against the Revolution’s own egalitarian standard. Reading these dynamics as embedded in the text lead me to the following translation of the play’s closing:
POET. And all will know that his trip was not in vain. And then they’ll say, “Rwandi has returned, and among us … he lives free!”
Perhaps this rendering takes excessive liberties. Then again, if translations endeavor to echo the original work’s effect upon language and at the same time present the foreign as foreign, as I believe they should, then translations are always doing double-duty. To accomplish both tasks in a way that has a chance at impacting target language audiences similarly to the original requires a holistic approach that is neither too rigidly literal nor unfettered from the source. Hopefully Ruandi will soon make his song heard to new ears.
Gerardo Fulleda León (Santiago de Cuba, 1942), Premio Nacional de Teatro 2014, is the author of some twenty plays and was General Director of the Rita Montaner Theatre Company from 1988 until his retirement in 2014. He resides in Cerro, Havana.