The great powers– the leading players in the imperialist system– have always required a source for the energy to drive their economic engines. They needed energy resources to build and empower their military might; they needed energy to grow their national economies and power their vessels of trade and transportation. Indeed, their socio-economic systems would have collapsed without ample and available energy sources.

At the dawn of the capitalist industrial era, that source came mainly from coal. Coal powered the machines that grew the productivity of labor to great new heights. It is reasonable to think that only those countries with easy access to coal could then become great capitalist powers.

At the turn of the last century, oil– an abundant, efficient, and easily stored and transported energy source– became essential for the exercise of economic and military might. As modes of transportation became dependent upon petroleum products, an intense rivalry was stoked for access to oil, often found in more remote areas of the world, far removed from the great urban centers of the great capitalist powers. 

At the same time, the great capitalist powers accelerated their drive to dominate the entire world. Lenin and others saw this as a higher stage of capitalist development impelled by the dominance of monopoly capitalism, finance capital, and capital export. 

Access and control of energy resources played an extremely large role in motivating this development, leading to conflict and colonization over the areas offering abundant oil production. 

It could be said that “oil imperialism” was a critical factor in the course of the Second World War: Japan — a country without adequate oil reserves– needed to secure resources to pursue its imperialist mission; likewise, Germany’s eastward turn was prodded by its thirst for Soviet oil.

As the leading imperialist power after WWII, the US had its own adequate petroleum resources, but sought to guarantee that global oil supplies would remain available to its clients in the crusade against Communism. 

After the end of the Cold War, new technologies unleashed huge reservoirs of oil and natural gas in the US. A once-stable international market was consequently disrupted, allowing US producers to reshape, even dominate, the global distribution of oil and natural gas. 

But in the decades to follow the end of the Cold War, those capitalist countries that were the most trusted anti-Communist allies were relying on long-established, existing sources of energy or had turned to convenient, adjacent, transit modes from the energy giant, the now-capitalist Russia.

Europe, for example, had grown increasingly reliant on Soviet oil and gas even before European socialism’s fall. And OPEC’s distribution network and quasi-planned marketing maintained a persistent global stability of price and availability.

From where would the US, undergoing a technological revolution with fracking, take its oil and gas bonanza?

I began to discuss the US shift toward what I called “US oil and gas imperialism” seven years ago (here, here, here, here and here). I wrote in July of 2019: 

US oil and gas imperialism is another feature of the new economic nationalism. With US oil production matching or exceeding every other global producer, and with natural gas extraction growing dramatically, the economic nationalists foresee the US now competing successfully for markets. The conventional explanation of the US aggression against oil-producing states must now be retired. The US is no longer solely obsessed with commanding and dominating existing oil producers– US intervention is not simply about the oil in the way it has been in the past. That is, it is not simply acquiring oil resources that motivates US aggression, but commanding oil markets as well.

Thus, the US is also out to wreck competing oil and gas producers by sanctions, disruptions, and destruction. The US corporations want the markets in order to peddle their own energy resources. The long trail of wrecked, dysfunctional, and economically strangled global oil producers attests to this new motivation and serves US energy corporations well. 

I have been writing often of this shift of US imperial design for over two years. Nothing demonstrates the intent of the new energy imperialism as does the Department of Energy’s recent renaming of US natural gas as “Freedom Gas” and the product as “molecules of freedom.” This silly branding is part of the campaign to win Europe and other gas-dependent markets from Russia and Iran/Qatar. Even though US liquified “freedom gas” is 20% more expensive than Russian gas, the Trump administration bullied Germany’s Angela Merkel to agree to two new LNG terminals in Germany. Her admission that LNG from the US would not break even for at least a decade demonstrates the aggressive face of the new US energy imperialism.

US gas producers have stoked anti-Russia sentiment to draw Poland and the Baltic states into their LNG market nexus. US LNG annual exports to Portugal and Spain grew from a tiny base to nearly 20 and 30 billion cubic feet, respectively, between 2016 and 2017.

And US crude oil exports soared after the crisis in the Straits of Hormuz. US oil shipping nearly doubled in the aftermath of the mysterious “attacks” in the Persian Gulf. President Trump underscored the attractiveness of foregoing the Straits and buying from the US. Rather than taking the “dangerous journey,” Japan and PRChina should be reminded that “the US has just become (by far) the largest producer of energy in the world.” (my emphasis)

Writing in 2019, I was anticipating geopolitical events geared to shifting the natural gas market dramatically in favor of the US. I foresaw the “anti-Russia” push as targeting the natural gas market in Europe and “crisis” in the Middle East as disrupting shipments from traditional Middle East suppliers. Hostility and conflict would be the thumb-on-the-scales to offset the higher price (lower risk) of US liquified natural gas. 

Unlike the Cold War era, where the US postured as a protective shield for safe, durable, and inexpensive energy channels, the post-Cold War US policy places US immediate economic interests above the supposed alliance obligations; without consultation, the US tossed aside its role among its allies as the guarantor of peace and security and is taking on the role of international energy huckster.

In 2022, the US secured a major victory in oil and gas imperialism with the war in Ukraine. As a result of a concerted campaign to destabilize Ukraine, separate it from Russia, and coax it into NATO’s anti-Putin alliance, the US drew Russia into a long, bloody war. The war proved to be a veritable gift for the US and its energy industry. Anti-Russia hysteria provoked the US’s European allies into breaking economic ties with Russia, including the big prize–cutting off Russia’s supplies of natural gas. Seduced by Cold War-like rhetoric and fear-mongering, European countries outdid each other with belligerence, culminating in refusing cheap Russian energy resources. To seal this self-defeating move on the part of US “allies,” the US organized the destruction of crucial Russian pipelines. Left with no alternative to Russian energy, Europe turned to their US “partner.”

US exports of oil to Europe more than doubled between 2021 and today. Likewise, disrupting natural gas distribution has paid off for the US with liquid natural gas (LNG) exports nearly doubling from 2018 to 2022. Quoting The Wall Street Journal:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kicked U.S. [LNG] exports into overdrive. Since March 2022, U.S. developers have signed 57 supply agreements representing about 73 million metric tons of LNG annually… more than four times the number of contracts they signed between 2020 and 2021.

Many of these contracts run for 20 years and underpin the construction of terminals that have yet to be built. LNG exports are expected to more than double [again!] from current levels by the end of this decade…

Thus, thanks to the war in Ukraine, US allies had the privilege of incurring the costs of liquefaction, shipping, and building LNG terminals to show their solidarity with the US-instigated war.

Foolishly, European leaders rushed to show their support for the war, even at tremendous cost to their own economies.

Likewise, the unfolding war in the Middle East plays into the hands of the US oil and natural gas imperialists. As the WSJ concedes:

In the longer term, the Red Sea situation could bring more business for U.S. LNG shippers, which are building out export capacity at Gulf Coast facilities and are vying for big contracts with big buyers in Europe, analysts said.

The percentage of LNG tankers set to pass through the Suez Canal has dropped to its lowest point in at least a decade.

But the LNG will be coming from the West, thanks to the beneficence of the US government anticipating the changing energy market!

Paul Hannon and William Boston put it well: “For the second time in three years, a conflict in Europe’s neighborhood is threatening to weaken a struggling economy, while a more robust U.S. is watching from a safe distance.” 

It is indeed an odd ally that takes advantage of the sacrifices that it imposes upon its friends to make. While US capitalism has enjoyed strong growth, thanks to two wars in other lands, its European friends have endured inflation and stagnation. Germany, led by Social Democrats and Greens, has met the US-led call to war with enthusiasm, militarism, and a belligerence unseen since the Second World War. Germany has materially supported Ukraine second only to the US and matched the US’s shuttering of economic relations. Where the US has shown healthy growth for 2023, Germany has fallen into recession, its industrial sector racked by high energy costs and supply shortages– a steep price to pay for following US leadership. “‘The threat of deindustrialization is real,’ said Max Jankowsky, chief executive of GL Giesserei Lossnitz, a 175- year-old foundry in the eastern German state of Saxony.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s popular satisfaction is the lowest for a chancellor since 1997. Germany– the leading power in the European Union, an industrial giant, the world’s fourth largest economy– has been brought to its knees by US oil and gas imperialism. 

The people, and especially the left, need a constant reminder of the material interests behind global imperialism and the mechanism that powers it. Imperialism is not a consequence of bad leadership from Trump, Biden, Johnson, or Modi or their ilk; it is not the product of neoliberalism or any other ideology; it is not the result of a lust for power. In short, imperialism is not a matter of moral choice or competence. Instead, it is an imperative of capitalism in its modern form. It is an expression of the rivalries generated by capitalist competition for markets, resources, and most tellingly, profits. When that competition reaches its greatest intensity, war ensues. 

Some would like to believe that we can break the link between capitalism, exploitation, inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, and war. They aver that a benign capitalism, regulated by enlightened governments, can escape the imperialist system. History shows no such eventuality. People are awakening to the impossibility of “fixing the system.”

The left overlooks this at its peril.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

https://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2024/01/oil-natural-gas-and-capitalism.html

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8HaTgpZOxA

By James Thompson

CINCINNATI, OHIO – The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, nestled between the Bengals’ and Reds’ stadiums in downtown Cincinnati overlooking the Ohio River, is a beacon of hope and progress for working people everywhere. Open since 2004, it is a tribute to those brave people who struggled for freedom and justice against the oppressive system of slavery.

The structure itself is very impressive and the design is symbolic of the winding path to freedom taken by the slaves. It is located at the end of the historic Roebling Suspension Bridge which spans the Ohio River. The Ohio River marked the line separating slavery from freedom during the antebellum period. A beautiful, south-facing glass wall overlooks the Ohio River and Kentucky.

I visited the museum with some pride since I have ancestors who served as conductors on the Underground Railroad in Missouri.

As I entered the exhibition area of the museum after climbing some winding stairs, my attention was seized by two massive textile works. The works are by Aminah Brenda Lynn and illustrate the struggles of the African people on their path to freedom from slavery. The work depicts the struggles against the transatlantic slave trade as well as local struggles in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. Cincinnati and Ripley, Ohio were two of the most important locations in the history of slavery in this country. They were the points at which slaves were shipped to the south and the points through which the slaves had to pass on their journey to Canada, where the exploitive capitalist slavery practices were prohibited.

The next compelling work was a huge mural started by Tom Feelings and completed by Tyrone Geter after Feelings death. From the artist’s statement, “The central image depicts the confinement of an individual in the Mason County Slave Pen. The surrounding images depict the arrival into America, slave auction, family separation, forced coffle marches, and slave labor in the forests of Tennessee and cotton fields of Missipppi. The remaining images provide additional details of the interstate slave trade.”

This work leads to a reconstructed slave pen from Maysville, Kentucky. Owned by John W. Anderson in the early 1830s, it provides a look at the horrific conditions that slaves were forced to endure. There were bars on the windows and slaves were frequently left with no choice but to relieve themselves while shackled in place. It is a clear example of how slavery robbed these brave people of their dignity. John Anderson owned a racing stable and lived a luxurious lifestyle as a result of the profits he extracted from these workers’ labor and the sale of human beings.

Throughout the museum are the images of the leaders of the progressive movement including Paul Robeson, W.E.B. DuBois, Pete Seeger, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriot Tubman, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and many more. Inspirational quotations were also prominently displayed from many of these individuals.

The importance of “courage, cooperation, and perseverance” are stressed in the struggle for freedom.

The multicultural and multiethnic nature of the struggle against slavery was a notable theme through the museum’s exhibitions. The contributions of African-Americans, Anglos, Latinos and Native Americans to this struggle were memorialized.

Several movie theaters helped illustrate the struggle against slavery. One film, “Brothers of the Borderland” was introduced by Oprah Winfrey. It was the story of how two leaders of the Underground Railroad in Ripley, Ohio cooperated to help slaves escape across the Ohio River. John Parker was a former slave who was a successful metal worker and inventor. John Rankin was an Anglo religious leader. In the video, the two worked together to help a woman start her journey to Canada after crossing the Ohio River. The film depicts the terrorism which was used against the slaves and their allies. The slave owners made frequent raids across the Ohio River in an effort to recapture escaped slaves which they viewed as their lost property. They were supported by the laws of the land at the time and anyone assisting an escaped slave was viewed as a thief and was subject to prosecution, even in the North.

It is important to remember the progress we have made in this country to reach a point where we can support this remarkable museum. I think it is also important to remember that in spite of the progress, capitalists have still not relinquished their affinity for slavery. Slavery is still a business practice used around the world and a few individuals are reaping fantastic profits from it. Although union-busting and red baiting are terrorist tactics used against working people in this country, more destructive tactics are used in other countries such as Colombia and Guatemala. Violence and executions in those countries are used against trade unionists and labor leaders in an effort to keep workers in virtual slavery with extremely low wages and little, if any, benefits. Some maintain that these slave-like conditions are not far from our border and if we fail to struggle against the profit-centered corporations, slavery and terrorism could be revived here. Of course, low wage workers in this country now, such as undocumented immigrants, may be hard put to find differences between their lives and those of the slaves south of the Ohio River during the antebellum period.

The fuels of progress are unity and struggle and this marvelous museum exemplifies this concept. When in Cincinnati don’t miss the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

For more information, go to http://www.freedomcenter.org/

PHill1917@comcast.net

James Thompson is a psychologist and social justice activist in Houston

AfricaFocus Bulletin
July 6, 2016 (160706)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

As recognition grows that the legacy of slavery and the slave trade
is still embedded in the structural inequalities of today’s world,
scholars are finding new ways to make the lost connections visible.
One dramatic and inspiring illustration, featured in this issue of
AfricaFocus Bulletin, is the film “They Are We,” showing the
rediscovery and re-connection in person with their African relatives
of an Afro-Cuban community which still celebrates their heritage
with dances and songs in a language almost forgotten by current
generations even in its villages of origin in Sierra Leone. The
film, first released in Cuba in 2013, features the story of this
rediscovery, in the voices and faces of the communities who
collaborated in the making of the
film.

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/sltd1607.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
http://www.africafocus.org/docs16/sltd1607.php

The film originated in the research in Cuba and West Africa of the
Australian anthropologist Emma Christopher. But it turned into
dialogue and collaboration of both members of the communities and
filmmakers in Cuba and Sierra Leone.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains several short reviews, from New
York, Chicago, Havana, and from the website for the film, as well as
links to an educator’s guide for use of the film in classrooms. The
full video is available to rent for streaming on Amazon for $2.99
(go to http://tinyurl.com/zhvbqcw).

Thanks to AfricaFocus reader Daphne Muse for calling my attention to
this film through her Facebook post.

And, by coincidence, just as I was deciding to put this on
AfricaFocus, as a break from the normal focus on analysis of current
events and issues, I also was reminded of two related sets of
stories. I think AfricaFocus readers will agree that such glimpses
of the past are not just of academic interest, but also of relevance
in understanding how that past still molds today’s world, and how
remembering and reconnecting must be part of building new futures
that begin to repair the accumulated and continuing injustices.

First, the Washington Post published a feature article on Albert
Jose “Doc” Jones, who has long been a pioneer in maritime research
on the wrecks of slave ships, including the São José, a Portuguese
ship that went down near Cape Town after leaving Mozambique in 1794.
The Post article can be found at http://tinyurl.com/zefpceh. The
artifacts from the 1794 wreck, in which over 200 of the 500 slaves
on board drowned, will be on display at the National Museum of
African American History and Culture, as part of a cooperative
project of the Smithsonian Institution, Iziko Museums of Cape Town,
and other partners in the U.S. and Africa (see the press release
from the Smithsonian Institution at http://tinyurl.com/q6jbgqp). And
a short video on the São José, from Iziko Museums, is available at

The same morning, Ezikiel Pajibo, another AfricaFocus reader (in
Liberia), posted a Facebook link to an article from South Africa
History Online (http://www.sahistory.org.za) about Liberia’s
“Kroomen” sailors who worked along the West African and Southern
Africa coasts as contract workers for the British Navy as the slave
trade was ending in the 19th century and into the 20th century(
http://tinyurl.com/hns8s65). These sailors were among the channels
for the contacts of the Garvey movement in the Americas with South
Africa and Namibia (as explored in publications by scholars such as
Gregory Pirio and Robert Vinson).

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

They Are We http://theyarewe.com/

For a teaser video see https://vimeo.com/ondemand/theyarewe

To rent ($2.99) or purchase the streaming video on Amazon, go to
http://tinyurl.com/zhvbqcw

An educators’ guide for the film, with background on the slave trade
to Latin America and class activities suggestions, is available at
http://icarusfilms.com/guide/taw.pdf. A DVD for classroom use can
also be ordered from http://icarusfilms.com/new2015/taw.html

**************************************************************

This Documentary Uncovers an Afro-Cuban Community Singing in an
Almost Extinct African Language

http://remezcla.com/ – Direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/zrlyhjc

Feb. 18, 2016

Manuel Betancourt

They Are We tells a story that, were it not told by a University
professor in the middle of a documentary, you’d swear couldn’t
possibly be true. Emma Christopher, who’s written extensively on the
Atlantic slave trade and teaches at the University of Sydney, found
herself connecting a remote chiefdom in Sierra Leone with a small
Afro-Cuban community in Perico whose traditional song and dances
suggest a direct lineage to that Western African group. The film’s
title is a direct quote from a Sierra Leonean upon watching videos
of the Cuban dancers: “They are we!” he exclaimed, seeing something
in the annual San Lazaro ceremony that looked all too familiar.

That’s right, a lively celebration by the proud members of the
Gangá-Longobá in central Cuba eventually led Christopher to find the
African village from whence the songs came from generations ago.
Moreover, she arranged for these Afro-Cuban people to fly to the
place where their ancestor was torn from her family, sold to
slavery, and taken to the Caribbean island all those years ago.

As Christopher told an audience here in New York, “It’s completely
incredible that they’ve kept these songs and dances alive for all
these centuries!” The songs were being sung in a very particular
kind of language–the Banta tongue–which is nearing extinction in
Western Africa. Armed with this amazing story, Christopher moved to
Cuba for two years and ended up getting a Fellowship from the
Australian Research Council that helped her fund the finished film.
In it, we see four Cubans from Perico make the journey to Sierra
Leone where they are met with open arms by a community that was all
too happy to get to know these long-lost family members. They Are We
is a moving story that celebrates this colorful and vibrant slice of
Afro-Cuban culture, and which shows the resilience of tradition even
in the face of historical violence.

Christopher was on hand after the film’s screening at the Film
Society of Lincoln Center’s Dance on Camera series for a Q&A where
she talked about the long-gestating project, and explained more
about the cultural similarities between these two geographically
distinct communities.

Find some highlights from the Q&A below.

On How They Are We Came Together

“The film’s title is a direct quote from a Sierra Leonean watching
videos of the Cuban dancers: “They are we!” he exclaimed, seeing
something in the annual San Lazaro ceremony that looked all too
familiar.”

It was really my incredible pleasure to be part of that. It was an
amazing privilege. I never planned to make this film. I was working
on a totally separate project. I originally filmed the Cubans out of
interest, them being the only group still in Cuba that celebrated
being Ganga which I know, as a historian, means they were from
Sierra Leone/Liberia. They did not know this at this point. I wanted
to show it to my students in Australia who don’t know much about
Afro-Cuban cultures. And then, as you saw in the film, when I was
working in Liberia on the original project, these people in a cafe
saw it, and they were like “You have to show it to the whole town.”
And what I initially thought I was doing, what I was originally
interested in, was studying people’s reactions to it. So I started
showing it across West Africa in order to get people’s reactions.
Because I was intrigued by the way they responded. Because even then
I had no idea that we’d eventually be quite certain that an answer
was possible.

On Choosing Who Got to Make the Trip to Africa

[Who you see in the film is] a small part of the group. In some way
I turned it over to them. It’s kind of interesting: this had always
been a women’s society, and it’s pretty clear that it also was in
Cuba until Florinda–Cuco’s grandmother–died. Florinda had three
daughters. It had always passed from mother to daughter up until
that points. But she had three daughters, two of whom predeceased
her, and one of whom had medical problems. She was not able to pass
it to her. But she passed it to her granddaughter, Piyuya who you
saw in the film. But what happened was, in Cuba, after Florinda
died, a Santero –and Santería is a much more male-dominated
religion–said, well it should stay in the family and it should be
passed to Cuco, Florinda’s grandson. So Cuco thinks of himself as
the leader and that’s fine. Except everyone else thinks of Piyuya as
the leader because she’s a woman and she inherited it from the
former leader. Piyuya was sadly, too old to come; she’s passed away
since then. She was 85 in the film. She was not strong enough for
the journey.

But Cuco really wanted to come and he wanted to bring his grandson.
And I very much wanted to bring Alfredo because he was someone who
had been carving African art. He was also known as really teaching
children about the pride in their African roots. And then I said
that they were not bringing four guys, because that’s a different
dynamic, and so, of course, it was Elvira who’s the successor. What
was interesting was that when we got to Africa was that the Africans
presumed that Elvira is the leader. And so Cuco would say that he’s
been waiting for his grandmother to appear to him in a dream for 30-
odd years to tell him the secrets, but in Africa, unfortunately, he
realized that this wasn’t going to happen. Because it’s a woman’s
secrets. And this was a bit of a surprise to him.

On the Surprising Cultural Resilience of Songs And Dances

The [Cubans] did not have that much of a sense of what it meant.
Certainly not in terms of the dances. The songs have slightly
different meanings to them but what was kind of intriguing is that
they more or less sing them in the same order as the Sierra
Leoneans. It’s not in the film, but there’s actually a recording by
Lydia Cabrera, the well-known Cuban-American anthropologist. She
recorded the Gangá-Longobá in the 1950s. But when Cabrera came to
the U.S. from Cuba after the revolution, she brought those
recordings with her and then kind of forgot that they existed. And
I’d taken those back to Cuba and Sierra Leone and they are very much
more identifiable to the Sierra Leoneans.

In fact, this one, which I found when I was editing this when I was
checking the subtitles for it, there’s a lot of evidence that up
until 1980 Florinda knew exactly what those songs meant. Because she
still says words in the Cabrera recordings that indicate that she
had much more clear meaning and what’s interesting and that up until
her death, she was known in the Perico region as a herbal healer. So
even though today they’d forgotten that some of the songs are herbal
remedies, there’s quite a lot of evidence that she knew. There are
clear differences in meaning, but underneath that, there’s more
commonality than I ever would have anticipated.

**************************************************************

‘They Are We’ review: Documentary unites Cubans, Africans

“They Are We” records the reunion of Afro-Cubans and Sierra Leone
villagers.

Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/guf8xlp

“They Are We” proves that you can go home again.

It takes a while to set up its centerpiece, a joyous
transcontinental reunion of Afro-Cubans and Sierra Leone villagers.
But the 77-minute running time of “They Are We,” making its U.S.
theatrical premiere this weekend at Facets with filmmaker Emma
Christopher in attendance, is nothing compared to the estimated 170
years that passed before the film’s far-flung subjects found each
other again.

Christopher’s story is an academic and musicological detective
story. Several years ago the University of Sydney professor traveled
to Perico, Cuba, where she filmed the Ganga-Longoba community. The
Ganga’s traditional chants, she discovered, originated in the
isolated Sierra Leone village of Mokpangumba, ravaged by civil war
in the 1990s. Christopher describes herself as a slave trade
historian; her research indicates the Mokpangumba people were sold
into slavery in the mid-1800s, to Cuban traders.

For a half-hour or so, “They Are We” shuttles back and forth from
Cuba to Sierra Leone as the two communities, who first come to know
of each other’s existence through viewing Christopher’s footage,
prepare for the Afro-Cubans’ life-altering trip across the ocean.
Christopher allows her camera subjects to reiterate their
anticipation once too often. (When one woman says, “I want the
moment we will meet to arrive,” you know what she means.) Then the
film grows into itself, and lovingly chronicles the celebratory
meeting of these very different but ancestrally connected groups.

The Ganga are given African names; woodcarver Alfredo Duquesne, for
example, becomes “Uncle Sinava.” In one scene he learns the art of
scaling a palm tree from his new brothers. The Mokpangumba boys in
turn learn baseball. “It’s been more than 20 years since we last saw
this man dancing,” one villager remarks, admiring an elder’s
response to the presence of his distant relatives, home at last.

Parts of “They Are We” feel like a first draft. But once the party
starts, all is well.

**************************************************************

“They Are We” Premieres in Cuba

Yusimi Rodriguez

Havana Times, December 13, 2013

“They Are We” Premieres in Cuba

On December 3, after months of waiting and intense anticipation, the
premiere of Emma Christopher’s documentary They Are We took place in
the Havana residence of the British Ambassador.

Havana Times readers have been able to follow the story narrated by
the documentary through previous articles on the work of Christopher
and photographer Sergio Leyva  and my interview with Alfredo
Duquesne and Elvira Fumero, the film’s Cuban protagonists.

More recently, they also read of Reunion, a photo exhibition with
pieces by Sergio Leyva and sculptures by Alfredo Duquesne held in
Havana’s Casa de Africa.

Seeing the film, I got a sense of the distance that separates a
story one hears or reads from a story one sees with one’s own eyes.
I could try to describe the way in which Elvira takes part in the
daily chores of the women in the African village, her humbleness and
sincere desire to learn from them, but my description would
invariably fall short of capturing the reality of it.  One has to
see her, hear the way in which she says she must return to the
village because she didn’t get to carry a pitcher on her head.

Seeing a story that is both familiar and new to one is a strange
feeling. I had heard Leyva’s description of how the people of
Mukpangumba, Sierre Leone had welcomed the Cubans from the town of
Perico, Matanzas when they arrived at the village. I had even seen
photos of the encounter. Nothing, however, compares to the emotions
I felt on seeing it unfold on the screen.

I hadn’t had a chance to meet Humberto Casanova, a direct descendant
of Florinda Diago, and her grandson Yandrys Izquierdo. They were
unable to attend the premiere because they were busy working in the
Ganga Longoba African folklore group.

I had seen their faces in Sergio Leyva’s photographs, but I had yet
to know of their experiences during the trip. This may explain why
one of the parts of the film I enjoyed the most was when Yandrys
taught village children to play baseball and the four Cubans staged
a traditional Ganga Longoba performance for the locals.

To our Western eyes, Mukpanguma may look like a precarious place. A
different filmmaker may perhaps have concentrated on the absence of
drinking water and electricity. Throughout my life, I have seen
Africa as a decimated and pillaged continent torn by civil wars.

Cubans’ relationship to Africa has been that of the do-gooders who
deploy international aid in the form of soldiers, doctors and
engineers to the continent. Africa is all that, true, but it is also
a land of rich and varied cultures, of people who have been able to
overcome all manner of tragedies. Sergio Leyva and Alfredo Duquesne
described the inhabitants of Mukangumba as super-people.

The thing I appreciate the most about Christopher’s work, evident to
me since our first conversation, is her intention of showing a face
of Africa different than the one divulged by the media, of telling a
hopeful and happy story. “Happy Africa,” were her words when she
spoke with our editor Circles Robinson and I following the film’s
premiere, “happy news Africa.”

The Are We will be screened at the San Diego Black Film Festival in
January and the Sierra Leone Film Festival. The director was unable
to submit it in time for screening at the 35th Havana Film Festival
– perhaps we will be treated to it at next year’s festival.

Beyond the recognition it may or may not achieve, the film has
staged beautiful moments (all of them captured by the camera), of
which I have only offered a foretaste.

During our conversation with Emma Christopher, we learned that, when
she traveled to the African village with her editor Joana Montero in
order to synchronize the subtitles, she sang a number of songs she
had learned by heart, having had to hear them repeatedly during
editing.

A villager travelling with them gave her a startled look, surprised
at seeing a young white woman singing local songs. In the end, as
they did with the Cubans from Perico, the people of Mukpangumba gave
her an African name – “Lumbeh”, meaning “she who stays with us.”

I would have paid to see the faces of villagers while watching the
documentary. Christopher tells us many had never seen a television
before, that they don’t even have mirrors in the village, and that
it was very strange for them to see themselves on a screen.

The film not only captures beautiful moments, it also prompts
questions, such as: when will the history of Africa begin to be
taught at Cuban schools, not from the perspective of Cuban
internationalism, but that of the diversity of cultures that exist
on this continent, the civilizations of those who were brought to
the Americas as slaves?

We could ask ourselves the same question about our own continent:
when will Cuban schools begin to teach the history of the Americas,
which as important as that of Greece, Rome and Egypt?

Though They Are We will not be shown at this year’s Havana Film
Festival, I don’t believe Cubans should wait a whole year to see it.
Its duration (an hour and ten minutes) makes it apt for a television
screening. There are more than enough channels and spaces on Cuban
television where it could be shown for audiences around the country.

**************************************************************

Director’s Note

From http://icarusfilms.com/guide/taw.pdf

Making They Are We was a rollercoaster of a journey. It is a film
that I never intended to make; did not even believe was possible.
When I was invited to film the annual ceremony of Cuba’s Gangá-
Longobá people, I did so simply from interest in their rituals.
Cultures meld and adapt to fit new realities, that is their nature,
and enslaved people and their descendants have had more reason than
most to use their cultures as means of not only survival and
endurance but also transformation and regeneration. They had to make
anew from the tiny fragments that had not been stolen. So I was
fascinated by a set of songs and dances specific to one Afro-Cuban
community, quite different to the more familiar and far larger
Santería and Palo societies.

Even when I began to screen the subsequent film footage of the
Gangá-Longobá across the Liberian and Sierra Leonean hinterland–the
part of Africa from which people termed Gangá originated–I had
little idea what would happen. What fascinated me initially were
West African people’s responses to the Cuban performance. Their
wonder, pride and joy were evident.

Yet screening the Cuban ceremonies in West Africa eventually led to
a village that ‘claimed’ the Gangá-Longobá in the most beautiful,
profound way. Its people simply and spontaneously joined in with the
Cuban songs, something nobody else had done. Fascinatingly, with
very little formal education, they also understood right away the
significance. They were watching, they told me, the descendants of
somebody stolen from their village. As one man said, ‘they are we’.
It was a day that will forever remain with me.

There were years more of work: tracing the details of this claimed
connection to the best of my ability, dealing with bureaucracy, and
agonizing over the danger of privileging this very rare link over
other (equally valid) kinds of African American-African connection.
But the agonizing was mine not theirs, not on either side of the
Atlantic.

They waited far more patiently than I. They were sure of what they
knew, that these were their long lost kin. And when word finally
arrived that the Gangá-Longobá would now be free to travel to Sierra
Leone, they danced in spontaneous celebration while I danced with
far less skill around the kitchen of my rented apartment in Havana.
The Cubans and Sierra Leoneans told me that obviously, after all
their dedications and quiet pleas, the ancestors had pulled the
right strings.

I became a filmmaker as well as a more traditional historian writing
books because I wanted people to be able to speak for themselves–
albeit through my lens–and for viewers to see their expressions and
sentiments, to glimpse the realities of their lives. It has been my
extraordinary privilege to work on this film, to call so many of the
people it revolves around my friends. I hope you and your students
enjoy meeting them through the screen.

Dr. Emma Christopher
Director, Producer and Researcher of They Are We
Anti-Slavery Australia, University of Technology Sydney.

*****************************************************

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