# Eugenio Hernández Espinosa, a force destined for good

**Date:** 11/15/2021

If, fortunately, the work of Eugenio Hernández Espinosa appears widely published, in La pupila negra, a volume of Letras Cubanas signed by playwright and narrator Alberto Curbelo, is the life of the Negro Grande del Teatro, a qualifier that he would deserve from the author of a title that dignifies him.

It is no wonder that Curbelo found greatness in the risky endeavors of this author, active and vital at his 85 years that he turns today, November 15. For him, the director of Teatro Caribeño has no "precedents in Hispanic-American dramaturgy" insofar as he "forged himself" and "created the canons of a dramaturgy where (…) he shapes stories in which the black man lives his own life and speaks it in his language, in his ways of thinking and acting."

Before delving into these pages from which it is so difficult to separate, some words from maestro Rogelio Martínez Furé recognize Eugenio as the most important Afrodescendant playwright in the Spanish language. To support this, he argues that "starting with María Antonia, the theater of Eugenio Hernández Espinosa was gaining in a truly extraordinary dimension," and he alludes to the use of language, the resource of orality, African and Hispanic-origin poetry, "all mixed in a discourse of great coherence and great exuberance."

A first-person narrative that traverses his own existence, from the sensitive child eager for knowledge to the mature man who made real dreams that seemed distant, captivates and moves. Those memories "that haunted him in his haunted life" are of great use in understanding the revolution that the genius of his work meant within contemporary theater.

Eugenio knows very well who he is. After placing his arrival in the world in a historical, cultural, and also astrological context, he speaks of himself. His own life is one of those novels to which one wants to return someday, with its ups and downs and commitments, and it is a pleasure to read him, which is like listening to him speak of himself. "I never attempt to escape my responsibilities nor would I allow anyone else to. (…) My warrior spirit helps me make decisions that other people would try to avoid. I belong to the more evolved scorpions who use their great mental strength for good," he says.

The author of Calixta Comité and Mi socio Manolo believes that in past lives he developed in a civilization in which culture and intelligence were essential and "I like to think that I was an African prince of the Kingdom of Oyó, in which I have placed some of my patakines. Or that perhaps I was a griot, and I must narrate our genealogy and history. I have attempted this in my works," he assures.

And he speaks to us of the present. Conscious that he always stays ahead of his time, his current goals are to think for himself by taking advantage of "my virtues of old," so retracing the paths of theater represents for him great pleasure.

After these confessions treasured in memory comes, from anecdote and dialogue, now truly, the life of Eugenio, the little boy born of a family "poor but decent," and with aspirations to look life in the face as he was to deserve it.

It would seem that suddenly we have before us the humble and warmest home of the boy who remembers with astonishing precision his little cat Pinocho, or the first face of death, which he would know when he saw a chick he had been given die. The experiences set the pace for these pages in which adolescent love experiences will also appear and the patriotic awakening of a young man who served in the ranks of the jsp, and whose condition as a militant demanded from him a position before circumstances. "Neither fear nor terror nor panic could tame my conscience, my will to action," he says when he asserts that terror flooded the nation and that repression was then the language of tyranny.

Later he will speak of his works and subsequent repercussions, and along with other notes, appear, in the voice of prominent personalities, most just assessments regarding them.

It is worth citing, to close these lines, the words of researcher and essayist Inés María Martiatu when referring to one of his most outstanding creations, La Simona (Casa de las Américas Award, 1977): "This work of true Latin American epic is very much in tune with the times we live in: an undeniable awakening of the continent." And about him himself, those of actor Mario Balmaseda who, alluding to the movement of his characters, says, leaves us a memory "perhaps of the best Valle Inclán."