Of Pilgrims, Heretics, and Martyrs: Arturo A. Schomburg’s Black Internationalism and the Antillean Movement of Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This study provides a new reading of the writings of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg as an ethico-political theorist. Schomburg has been widely recognized as a bibliophile and even as a black historian, but his contribution as an Afro-Latin Americanist has been sadly overlooked, or perhaps misunderstood, due to his ability to move through identity boundaries—of nationality and race. Schomburg’s transnational and transcultural work is a site of fluidity that has escaped categorization. This study argues that the Puerto Rican and Cuban artisans’ tradition of disrespect for social privilege, parejeria, which is at the core of the practice of reading a viva voce in the cigar factories, comes alive in Schomburg’s writings. Likewise, Schomburg’s bibliographical writings can be considered a part of the episodic history of the black experience, as opposed to traditional history, a common practice among Latin American intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

This study provides a new reading of the writings of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg as an ethico-political theorist. Schomburg has been widely recognized as a bibliophile and even as a black historian, but his contribution as an Afro-Latin Americanist has been sadly overlooked, or perhaps misunderstood, due to his ability to move through identity boundaries—of nationality and race. Schomburg’s transnational and transcultural work is a site of fluidity that has escaped categorization. This study argues that the Puerto Rican and Cuban artisans’ tradition of disrespect for social privilege, parejería, which is at the core of the practice of reading a viva voce in the cigar factories, comes alive in Schomburg’s writings. Likewise, Schomburg’s bibliographical writings can be considered a part of the episodic history of the black experience, as opposed to traditional history, a common practice among Latin American intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In order to look into the connection between Schomburg’s black internationalism and his early days as a member of José Martí’s Cuban Revolutionary Party, this study provides a historical context of Cuban and Puerto Rican separatism from the irruption of the Cuban Ten Years War (1868-1878) until the War of Independence (1895-1898). During this thirty-year period that Bernardo Vega has called the Antillean movement of late nineteenth century, Cuban and Puerto Rican artisans joined the intellectual forefathers of the revolution— Ramón Emeterio Betances, José Martí, and Eugenio María de Hostos. Reading aloud in the tobacco factories became crucial to the dissemination of revolutionary ideas within the newly formed exile communities. United against Spanish colonialism and the greater threat of American imperialism, the Antillean movement was unique in that it became an interracial and interethnic site of collaboration from which an alternative culture began to emerge.