ABSTRACT
In the 1960s, the Cuban government started a national project aimed at the dissemination of African literature in Spanish, and between 1974 and 1980, 19 works were translated and published in Cuba, a representative selection of the most relevant African literary production dating from 1789 to 1976. Among these, a compilation of drama texts, edited in 1975, is striking both for its novelty and its contents. This anthology, entitled Teatro africano (African theatre), includes six plays set in different periods of African history, and featuring female characters playing leading roles in a world dominated by men. These include the legendary characters of Abraha Pokú, who confronts an illegitimate, tyrannical government, a group of Amazons ready to die in their struggle against their country’s colonisation, and Julieta, who denounces the typical obsession with money and power in postcolonial societies. The translations thus gain a didactic function, emphasising, as Adolfo Cruz-Luis (1975) claims in his prologue, the “effectiveness in order to transform obsolete social relations and structures” that can be attributed to theatre, both in Africa and in Cuba.
