CHAPTER III

             THE DECONSTRUCTION OF THE ANTILLES

FEDERICO JOSÉ ALVAREZ

            The future is created by transcending the present and where reality and dreams open the door of liberty, which is the sphere of the possible.

            Life justifies itself by transcending a given "state-of-things".

            The future remains a "project" until it claims a place in present reality. To transcend the present, humanity must struggle for all ideals that would become realities; that struggle both bridges and separates dreaming and doing.

            What is the sense of our task?

            What are the aims of our efforts?

            What does it mean for us to be Antillean?

            The archipelago of The Antilles is the axis from which Europe, 500 years ago, initiated the globalization of the culture of the West. Santo Domingo became the springboard of the New World, the vehicle through which Europe would make herself, for the first time, the center of the world. Afterwards, Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain distributed the islands and the rest of America among themselves.

            The European powers used The Antilles as common ground for their plans of domination; and the ethno-cultural mixture of races grew exuberantly. The Antilles, crucible of many histories, are the place where Western culture replanted itself. It founded there a new language which both offers and imposes Europe as the paradigm of history and culture, initiating the expansion of the West as a planetary culture.

            The West as paradigm has taken root throughout the planet as the technical realization of metaphysics and simulation of the ideal. Bereft of horizons other than those of a mass-culture, man acquiesces to the anonymous and impersonal by submitting to a relentless process of depersonalization. Occidental and planetary postmodernity, in shedding all projects from a "post-historical" perspective, poses the threat, as Guadarrama asserts, of a new marginalization of Latin America, with its unfulfilled modernity and its utopian humanism.

            Post-modern nihilism discards all the spiritual ties and values that related man to the Absolute. In so doing, humanity completes the overthrow of values which began with claim of the homo sapiens to absolute knowledge. From Aristotle to Leibniz this process was ruled by the principle of identity. Hegel and his principle of historical contradiction singled out alienation as the ontological foundation of existence. The process culminated with Marx's conception of homo faber who approaches all reality in terms of work as an object of work.

            More than half a century ago, Johan Huizinga warned about this state of affairs and attributed it to the diminution or the absence in the culture of homo faber of the ludic element. This is play as free activity, pleasure-giving and a-rational; man is homo ludens. In the act of play the man-child sheds his ordinary life and enters a dimension "with no purpose but full of sense." "Modern culture," says Huizinga, "scarcely plays at all, and when it seems to be playing, its game is false." Breaking with the "ordinary" world is for Huizinga an indispensable condition for attaining the condition of play. This function is as essential to man as thought or work and is present in the forming and developing of a culture.

            The Antilles, with their beauty and magic, provide an ideal setting for putting the world in parentheses (Husserl) and for unleashing, in the meantime, the playful element in human existence. This experience reconciles man and the natural world, Psyche with Eros.

            The fact that Cuba, our elder sister, is on the verge of entering a market economy by way of tourism creates a sudden common ground. The other islands or island-states of The Antilles ought to capitalize on this opportunity by organizing programs of regional economic integration to deal with the growing flow of capital from the First World through the concept of mass vacations, a therapeutic means of preserving societies affected by stress and lack of meaning.

            In a global society ruled by a free-market economy, each one of our islands or island-states must rediscover itself and see itself as forming part of a single region, the Antillean archipelago. For all the islands of the Antillean archipelago share a diversity that stems from the ethnographic accident that has shaped us. With that in mind, we must achieve the necessary solidarity for this region to claim an honorable and worthy place in the world market.

            For The Antilles to participate in the world community, it must make the best and most intelligent use of its resources. The historical exploitation of the Antilles brought no benefit to the neediest; what we produce must allow our respective states to establish a genuine distributive economy.

            We are integral parts of a geopolitical body known as The Antilles. We are related by our territories, our histories, and our living rhythms. We must be fully aware that the whole historical task of becoming a region is in our hands, particularly to develop a social structure that can take its place alongside other societies in a world community.

            To call ourselves Antilleans is to identify a common denominator that strings together these pearls scattered through the Caribbean, giving them both meaning and potency (energeia).

            To give new impetus to our history we must take on the conditions required by today's planetary horizons. To participate and survive, the name of The Antilles must be registered in the "global directory." It could well become the name of the leading world power in seaside tourism.