{"id":4947,"date":"2026-04-20T07:23:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/?p=4947"},"modified":"2026-05-05T17:56:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T21:56:54","slug":"motivos-de-son-at-95-the-enduring-mark-of-an-unforgettable-milestone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/motivos-de-son-at-95-the-enduring-mark-of-an-unforgettable-milestone-20042026\/","title":{"rendered":"Motivos de son at 95: The Enduring Mark of an Unforgettable Milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"

April 20, 1930, stands as a watershed moment in Cuban literature. On that day, a young journalist and poet from Camag\u00fcey, Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, published eight poems in the \u201cIdeales de una raza\u201d section of the influential Diario de la Marina<\/em>. Under the collective title Motivos de son<\/em><\/strong>, the poems \u2014 \u201cNegro bemb\u00f3n,\u201d \u201cMi chiquita,\u201d \u201cB\u00facate plata,\u201d \u201cSigue,\u201d \u201cAy\u00e9 me dijeron negro,\u201d \u201cT\u00fa no sabe ingl\u00e9s,\u201d \u201cSi t\u00fa supieras,\u201d and \u201cMulata\u201d \u2014 appeared in print. The publication did not go unnoticed. Contemporary accounts describe it as causing a genuine stir in the island\u2019s literary circles. No one had heard a voice quite like this in Cuban poetry.<\/p>\n

The significance of Motivos de son<\/em><\/strong> lies above all in its bold formal and thematic choices. Guill\u00e9n not only incorporated Havana\u2019s popular speech \u2014 with its phonetic shifts and distinctive syntax \u2014 but also used as his structural backbone one of Cuba\u2019s oldest and most authentic musical forms: the son<\/em>. Years later, the poet explained his intention: \u201cI have tried to incorporate into Cuban literature\u2026 what might be called the poem\u2011son.\u201d This choice amounted to a profound act of cultural reclamation. In the early decades of the Republic, as critic Katia Viera notes, \u201cBlackness provoked explicit fear, while the intellectual, social, and political project was to modernize the nation on the foundations of white European civilization.\u201d Against that exclusionary vision, Guill\u00e9n elevated the rhythm of the neighborhood, the beat of the bong\u00f3, and the slang of the solar<\/em> to the level of aesthetic principle.<\/p>\n

Cuban literary critics of the 1930s reacted quickly. Intellectuals such as Ra\u00fal Roa, Juan Marinello, and Jos\u00e9 Antonio Portuondo immediately recognized the poet\u2019s deep connection to the son<\/em> and his ability to reflect the racial and social dilemmas of Cuban life. Yet it was anthropologist Fernando Ortiz who offered one of the most incisive readings. Ortiz did not classify this poetry as exclusively Black, but rather as mulatto<\/em> \u2014 the product of an inseparable embrace between Africa and Castile. For Ortiz, Guill\u00e9n\u2019s verses anticipated his later theories on transculturation. Far from being superficial exoticism, Motivos de son<\/em><\/strong> revealed the mestizo essence of the Cuban spirit, a synthesis in which African heritage ceased to be a stigma and instead became a pillar of national identity.<\/p>\n

Beyond its intrinsic value, the collection proved decisive for Guill\u00e9n\u2019s later work. Critic Roberto Manzano has observed that once Guill\u00e9n embraced the Black universe \u2014 which, in his case, meant embracing himself \u2014 his poetic search turned toward a joyful authenticity rooted in the most popular layers of society. His narrative scope expanded from the solar<\/em> to the entire nation. The rhythmic experimentation of Motivos de son<\/em><\/strong> paved the way for later works such as S\u00f3ngoro cosongo<\/em> (1931), where Guill\u00e9n deepened this fusion, and eventually for poems of undeniable social and political weight, including the \u201cElegy for Jes\u00fas Men\u00e9ndez.\u201d Mirta Aguirre and other scholars of the period noted that the political militancy that would characterize Guill\u00e9n\u2019s maturity was not a rupture but a logical evolution of that first gesture of siding with the marginalized.<\/p>\n

The legacy of Motivos de son<\/em><\/strong> remains alive. Ninety\u2011five years after its publication, the Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n Foundation and outlets such as Granma<\/em> continue to recognize it as a landmark of Cuban culture and an essential reference for understanding national identity. By elevating the language of the son<\/em> to the realm of pure art, Guill\u00e9n did more than inaugurate an aesthetic movement; he shattered the walls of linguistic and racial prejudice. He returned to the people, in his own words, a voice that had always been theirs but had never resonated so powerfully within the solemnity of the printed page. That April of 1930, the young journalist from Camag\u00fcey ceased to be just another chronicler and became \u2014 without yet knowing it \u2014 the lyrical conscience of a nation.<\/p>\n

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez<\/p>\n

Photo: Cubadebate<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April 20, 1930, stands as a watershed moment in Cuban literature. On that day, a young journalist and poet from Camag\u00fcey, Nicol\u00e1s Guill\u00e9n, published eight poems in the \u201cIdeales de una raza\u201d section of the influential Diario de la Marina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4948,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1126,420],"ppma_author":[14],"class_list":["post-4947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-specials","tag-motivos-de-son","tag-nicolas-guillen"],"authors":[{"term_id":14,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"lazaro-hernandez-rey","display_name":"L\u00e1zaro Hern\u00e1ndez Rey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4949,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4947\/revisions\/4949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4947"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radioenciclopedia.cu\/cultural-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}