RESEARCH AGENDA

In my research I have tried to explore some of the less conventional or non-

canonical aspects of Latin American literature and culture and as a continuation

of my work on Aponte’s “book of paintings” and my experiences as a diplomat in

the Middle East, I’m currently researching and preparing three books:

a) Ethiopia imagined in José Antonio Aponte’s “book of paintings”:

On the presence of imaginaries about Ethiopia in the “book of paintings” as taken

up by Aponte from Luis de Urreta’s book “Historia eclesiastica, politica, natural y

moral de los grandes y remotos reynos de la Etiopia…” (Spain, 1610) a narrative

of the “imaginary voyage” genre extensively read by the Cuban abolitionist and

artist. In this regard, I will follow the path pioneered first by Stephan Palmié (2002)

and then charted, in a more detailed way, by myself in my doctoral dissertation

(2005) about Aponte’s “Ethiopianism”. My idea is to deepen my previous study of

such views on Ethiopia as part of a “black Atlantic” tradition that, in Aponte's case,

re-reads and reappropriates themes from Christian European “political theology”

to use them against slavery and racism. At the same time, I will attempt to situate

Aponte’s views on Ethiopia as a very significant forerunner of later 19th and 20th

centuries “Ethiopianism” in the African Diaspora as expressed in Delany, Garvey,

Dubois and the Rastafari movement.

b) A translation into Spanish, preliminary study and annotated edition of An

Interesting Narrative. Biography of Mahommah G. Baquaqua (1854) for

Biblioteca Ayacucho (Venezuela) co-authored with professor Luis Duno (Rice

University). Baquaqua’s is Brazil’s only slave narrative and it is also one of the

most detailed accounts of the infamous Atlantic “Middle passage”. A Muslim

African from Benin captured during a war and sold as a slave, Baquaqua lived

and worked in Pernambuco and during a travel to New York with his master, in

1847, he escaped with the help of American abolitionists, traveling later to Haiti.

After going back to the United States, he wrote his memoir, one of the very few

texts in Latin America Studies through which we can gain some access to the

enslaved person’s perspective.

c) Another book, provisionally entitled “Orientalist Venezuela: three moments of

Venezuelan writers in the Middle East” concentrates on the representations of

the Middle East (specifically Turkey, Armenia, Iraq and Palestine) by Francisco

de Miranda (1750-1816) and Rafael Nogales Mendez (1879-1936) and about the

State of Israel by the poet and diplomat Vicente Gerbasi (1913-1992).

In the case of Miranda (widely recognized as a forerunner of Simon Bolivar) one

of his travel journals narrates his visit, for about three months, to the capital city

of the Ottomans, between July and September of 1786. In his journal Miranda

deals with significant aspects of cultural and social life of the city. The second

author, Nogales Mendez, was a notable adventurer and mercenary, who fought

in several conflicts around the globe and wrote extensively about his travels. His

memoir “Four Years Beneath the Crescent” (1936) describes his experiences as

a general in the Ottoman Empire’s armies. Nogales is a very important witness

of the Armenian Genocide and also served in Palestine and Sinai fighting against

the forces of T.E. Lawrence the famous “Lawrence of Arabia”. The third author,

Gerbasi, is undoubtedly one of most important Venezuelans poets of all time. At

the beginning of the 1960’s he served as the first Venezuelan ambassador to

Israel and there he wrote a long poem celebrating Israel’s history and heritage,
“Olivos de eternidad”, which was immediately translated into Hebrew and

published with a foreword by Israel’s ex Primer Minister Golda Meier.

My project is to study these three moments of the interaction of Venezuelans

intellectuals with the Middle East paying attention to the nuances and

complexities of their very different views, ideological perspectives and historical

contexts. Questions about personal and national identity, memory and trauma,

international conflicts and foreign relations, the “orientalists” views on the Middle

East in its dialectical relation with western culture self-representations will be

discussed.