Latin America love affair with Langston Hughes

Langston hughes (February 1, 1902 – May 22, 1967) was one of the most representative icons and best known poet of the Harlem renaissance, also, he was one of the initiators of an African-American literary art form called “jazz poetry” where some characteristics of jazz music, such as syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases were incorporated on it. 

Nevertheless his contributions to the African-American culture,  he was not recognized  immediately by his peers until years laters because his work did not exalted the “negro”.  His poems were centered in the life of the common African-American, their struggles and their thought, their desperation, their anger and their every day obstacles, characteristics that many of his intellectual fellows did not want them to be exposed because they wanted to show the best side of their community to the “whites”.

However, thanks to his many journeys to Mexico and Cuba, and his writings about Latin-American people and lifestyles, he made  a name in Latin America and Latin America took advantage of it. Various of his poems such as “ I too” and “ Let America be America again”  were translated into spanish and were made slogan of liberation and anti-imperialism.

But what aspect of his poetry made Langston Hughes so successful in Latin America that  his name and ideas transcend race and culture?.

To begin with, Langston Hughes poetry, even though referred to “negroes” experiences, told what every ex colonized country felt in that moment, that they had been pulled apart, neglected and tyrannized for centuries. Latin America’s mixed races, natives, negroes and mulattoes shared Hughes' discourse of liberation and freedom from the white people.

They wanted people know that they were also American and that their race was not a  reason for being segregated and slighted.  His idea of creating a “world of color” or " black internationalization" was universal regardless his nationality and race, which made his poems to transcend in the spanish community. As a result, his poems had a great impact in places such as the French Caribbean where african descendents were also fighting for their rights, in African-uruguayan communities whose fight for visibility and awareness of “negritud”  was also in its peak under the leadership of Pilar Barrios (1889 – 1974) a black poet and one of the founders of the Partido Autóctono Negro. He was even praised with poems by his fellows Latin-American poets.

"Voces" by Pilar Barrios

Langston Hughes hermano,

hermano de raza

y también por ser hombre y humano,

Mi admiración te alcanza.

Alejo Carpentier

Y canto ese día,

Langston, Langston,

Para todos ese día,

Langston, Langston!

His influence in the intellectual Cuban art world, specially over poets such as Nicolás Guillén and Gustavo Urrutia is undeniable “Nicolás at Langston’s urging had used the Son dance rhythm to capture the moods and features of the black Havana poor” (Cayton, T. 2005).

    Mulata

“Si tú supiera, mulata,

la veddá;

¡que yo con mi negra tengo,

y no te quiero pa na!”

Foremost, his legacy  to the world not only consists on literary pieces of work but he was also instrumental in the construction of a non-white Latin-American identity unified by the fight for their rights.

Links of interest:

Lecturas mexicanas de Langston: Estética, política, raza y ...
Poems

References 

 Kutzinski, V. M.(2006). "Yo tambien soy America": Langston Hughes Translated. American Literary History18(3), 550-578. Oxford University Press. Retrieved May 28, 2015, from Project MUSE database.
Cayton, T. (2005). SOUL BROTHERS/hermanos del alma: Langston Hughes (1902-1967)