Morúa and Hemetério: Reading Afrodescendant Criticism Under Stones in Post-abolition Cuba and Brazil

Abstract: This article unearths two cases of Afrodescendant literary criticism from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Latin America. Afrodescendant writers Martín Morúa Delgado (Cuba, 1856-1910) and Hemetério José dos Santos (Brazil, 1858-1939) critiqued the works of the influential white Cuban Cirilo Villaverde and Afro-Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, respectively. In 1892, Morúa questioned the racial representations in Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés (1882), challenging its status as an antislavery novel. Similarly, in 1910, Hemetério critiqued Machado for overlooking Brazil’s history of enslavement and omitting enslaved characters from his works. While Morúa’s critique is recognized by scholars of Villaverde, Hemetério’s critique of Machado remains fundamentally overlooked. This article argues that their critiques were not just mere reactions to specific works but strategic efforts to assert literary autonomy and influence national literatures. It examines the challenges these writers faced in the highly racialized post-abolition context, particularly the weight of the “informant” role, and how they navigated this while asserting their autonomy. By focusing on Morúa’s observations on aesthetics and Hemetério’s on history, the article challenges the prevalent critical tendency in contemporary Afro-Latin American studies to privilege historical readings, arguing that for these writers, both form and content were important. Keywords: Afro-Latin American criticism; Martín Morúa Delgado; Hemetério José dos Santos; Cirilo Villaverde; Machado de Assis; post-abolition; realism