He will be with us, in us…
With these words, Casa de las Américas bid farewell to Haydée Santamaría in July 1980. We echo them to bid farewell to our dear Roberto Fernández Retamar, who passed away on July 20 in Havana at the age of 89.
Roberto Fernández Retamar is an intellectual of universal stature. His contributions to poetry, essays, and literature place him among the great intellectuals of Latin America.
Retamar thought about and taught us to think in emancipatory terms about some of the core problems of our identity and our history, becoming a central figure in contemporary Cuban and Latin American culture. Among the texts that make up his vast body of work, Caliban (1971) represents much more than a book; it is the keystone that inaugurated an original reading from which to understand ourselves as a region and from which to read the world with a Latin American perspective.
Consistent, generous, supportive, and ethical, Don Roberto was also a truly remarkable achiever. When he assumed the directorship of Casa de las Américas in 1965, he quickly transformed it into one of the continent's leading cultural centers. Since then, every Latin American who enters Casa feels as if they are entering their own home. It is this hospitality that now forms part of Retamar's legacy.
From Casa de las Américas, Retamar contributed to strengthening critical, revolutionary, emancipatory, and decolonizing thought. Retamar himself maintained that Casa de las Américas was not merely an institution, envisioning it as a vital space from which to foster intergenerational solidarity. His tireless commitment to the education of young people confirms that an irreplaceable figure has departed. It is this commitment that CLACSO embraces, pledging to continue disseminating Fernández Retamar's work among new generations.
Goodbye, dear Roberto.
Anti-colonial thought
of our America
Roberto Fernandez Retamar
Collection of Anthologies of Latin American and Caribbean Social Thought.
CLACSO. Casa de las Américas.
Buenos Aires.
December 2016
