Roel Caboverde Yacer - Interview

A SON OF THE SEA

By Reinaldo Cedeño Pineda
Translation by Carlos Laboada and Ellen Rosenzweig

A man's candor. A journey to the roots, from island to island. The intense search for his own style. My first 'deformed' portrait was of my son. The future and the drama is in the sea.

They say that Baracoa, at the farthermost part of eastern Cuba, is the city of "three lies," namely the La Farola viaduct, a marvel of engineering consisting of a highway perched at the foot of a mountain range, whose name means "street lamp" but which doesn't light up anything at all; the Yunque de Baracoa, an isolated plateau whose name means Baracoa Anvil, because of its shape, but which is not made of iron; and also the Miel River, which - despite having a name meaning "honey" - flows only with fresh water, although there may be some truth regarding its sweetness. Along those river banks grow cacao, coconuts and plantains, taking their nourishment from the waters and infusing them with wonderful flavors.

However, alongside the "three lies" there are "four truths" which turn this place into a natural shrine blessed by God. The symbol of this green and blue city, caressed by waves and sea breezes, reads "I am the smallest, but I will always be the first," reminding us that Baracoa was the very first township founded in Cuba, in the year 1512.

Nuestra Señora de la Asunción de Baracoa Church, a national heritage site, holds La Cruz de Parra (The Grapevine Cross), planted by Christopher Columbus.

Researchers and anthropologists have confirmed that due to its physical and cultural characteristics, this region is the place where the traces of Cuba's original residents, especially the Tainos, are most evident.

Roel Caboverde Yacer was born in these surroundings, facing the sea, on November 20, 1947. When he was eight, his family left the coast to seek better economic circumstances inland, and his childhood games were replaced by cattle herding and cutting sugarcane, but that couldn't stop him from dreaming.

"My mother was a cleaning woman in a hospital and my father didn't have a job. That's how my life started in La Poa, about six kilometers from town. I was raised in my uncle's home and attended a rural school. You should have seen my math and Spanish notebooks - they were filled with drawings!"

And it was the same when he moved to Moa, a mining town farther to the north. The red dust of an iron-laden soil would stick to his clothes and shoes, and that color would haunt him. He started out as a painter - a house painter - but lasted only a few weeks.

Caboverde isn't one of those people who gives up easily, and his persistence bore fruit. He made some progress when he became a sign painter at the Pedro Soto Alba metallurgical plant, "and that pleased my mother, who was still working at the hospital, because she saw that I was starting to go somewhere in my life." But then he had to go off to serve a stint in the military.

"Don't think I stopped painting, because I didn't. I started painting the walls, I did murals on request about Fidel, Che and many other things. Then Che died, and I painted him many times, in my own way. It wasn't easy for me, because I never had an art teacher until a long time after that."

In one way or another, Caboverde remained in the world of paint and brushes. He returned to the same factory, where he was offered training in industrial drawing. "But that wasn't what I wanted to do. So I hit the streets, I did graphic design, political murals in the streets, until 1982, when I got this fixation about returning to Baracoa, my hometown." And that decision turned out to be a correct one.

THE 'CUBAN GUAYASAMÍN'

He was like a kid with a new toy. Quite a sight! The sea welcomed him home, and soon he went off to the provincial capital, Guantánamo, to train as an art teacher.

"I learned the theoretical background, which I had known nothing about, and sharpened the technique I had developed through self-study. I graduated in 1987 and ever since I've been teaching adults and preschoolers at the neighborhood cultural center."

Caboverde broke away from a tradition of painting the exuberant landscape surrounding the city. "I started painting landscapes but realized it was not my forte. There are great masters here like Orlando Piedra, and I devoted myself to finding my own style, to finding myself, and started to redraw the human figure.

"You see, I started to paint some timid little landscapes and some human figures, but it wasn't like real life; they were more like surrealist. I kept reworking and reworking those figures until I came up with what I have now. I achieved these unusual characters through experimentation."

"In realism, everything is already done, you take a picture, develop it, and there it is. But achieving one's own style is a whole different story. I think I have achieved it, and even though I'm not altogether satisfied with it, I do feel I've achieved something."

When I look at your painting, I can see the influence of Ecuadorian painter Oswaldo Guayasamín, especially in your attention to people's hands. How close do you feel to his work?

"Guayasamín! Every time I see one of his pieces, I feel something incredible, and I don't copy from him, but I keep in my memory the beautiful things he did, before and even now that he has passed away. Those hands and feet! Of course I try to reflect that in my own way, and in every painting I accentuate the hands and feet. Maybe I don't give enough importance to faces, but I do concentrate on the hands."

What is it about hands that are so important to you?

"For me, hands are a symbol of Cuban identity, because they have given us our freedom. If you can't do anything with your hands, through your work and your own efforts, then you're nobody, you don't do anything. Hands are fundamental to the body's beauty."

When did you paint the first human figure as you portray them now?

"My first 'deformed' portrait was of my son, and there's always something of him in every one of my paintings - his thick lips, his gestures - and of course, I put my feelings into every painting."

Caboverde's kindness is the first thing I sensed when I shook his workingman's hand, in the little room that serves as his studio, located in a neighborhood called Reforma Urbana. I asked his son, who has also studied painting, for an evaluation of Caboverde's work, despite the risk of family bias.

"My father has taught me not to fear anything in life. I know many painters, and I think his work has a great conceptual force. And in human terms, my father never complains. There aren't many like him: he doesn't have an ounce of evil in him."

LOVE GOES BEYOND ANY FIGURE

Roel Caboverde Yacer's unique works - seascapes, polimitas (small endemic shells with striking colors), black women, fishermen, roosters, cane cutters - have left Baracoa to travel the world. His paintings have been exhibited in the Netherlands, France, Italy, Germany, United States, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Japan - and the list keeps growing.

He has been able to develop a certain way of representing the Cuban countryside and the royal palm, the island's national tree. He shaped the tree's green frond into an arc, its slenderness into a special grace.

"Once I decided to paint the royal palm, and I spent weeks, months in the effort, until I was able to paint it from nature. Then I continued studying and searched for a figurative element, so that no matter where those palms are seen, in the United States, Japan or anywhere else, people would know that they're my palms."

Aren't you afraid of repeating yourself, with those geometric brushstrokes in the palm trees and other figures?

"When they first look at them, some people may think I'm repeating myself, but it's not the case. One has to learn to look closely at every face's expression, every composition. For instance, I may paint a portrait of my mother and you see anguish and fear in it, and then I can paint another picture of her with lively eyes. What makes the difference here is the mood I'm in when I paint it.

"Pablo Picasso was wonderful in terms of geometry and cubism, but my closest influence is Guayasamín.

"There is a painting called Despedida (Farewell): a fisherman with a hook in one hand and another hook dragging along on the boat, and also a woman embracing him. There's drama in that, in the woman bidding farewell to her husband. Every man who goes to sea should be seen off by his wife, because he's risking his life. This can be understood in many ways. In fishing or any related activity, the sea always means a painful separation.

"Furthermore, I not only paint the common worker, the fisherman, the palm tree and the rooster, which is a symbol or procreation and life. I used to fight cocks when I was a kid and went to cockfight rings…. Above all, I paint the love of women and things; love goes beyond any figure or geometry."

"I am a man in love with life, and I paint about romance, I paint women because they have the enchantment that gives us strength to live, and sex, which is divine. But my family is the most beautiful thing that I have.

"I have three daughters and a son, and they are the light of my life. Without love I can't paint, the painter who doesn't have a muse can't think of himself as a painter… These are my follies as a painter; I paint about my own life."

Speaking about your experiences, I assume that your relationship with growing cane has not only been close but also deep, given the profusion of paintings on that theme.

"When I was 14 I was already cutting cane; I had to work 8 or 10 hours a day. I learned what a cane field was all about right there, and the strength you need to get the juice out of sugarcane. When I did my military service I also cut sugarcane.

"There is not only beauty, but great effort in the cane cutter's work. You have to be strong to keep going alongside the other cane cutters, striving to do more than the other teams, even if it is only by one pile of sugarcane. I cut cane and it made me happy because I worked for my country and my people. But when I paint, I transform the sugar cane; I paint it blue, red, in a thousand different ways.

"I paint the men in the cane field as happy and sweaty, and I paint the women and love in the cane field rows. The cane field is a world in itself, sugarcane has a beautiful poetry all its own. Anyone who hasn't been there, who hasn't cut cane, can't possibly know what it's like."

And then there's the sea, of course. I hope you don't mind my mentioning that your brush has algae strands in it and smells like the sea.

"Life at sea is beautiful. Deep-sea fishing is the most beautiful sport in the world. It's difficult and demands courage. Sometimes you have to face sharks. Three or four years ago we were fishing in the Gulf, and a storm caught us. I was with some friends and we were taken as far as Maisí, on Cuba's eastern tip. It was a very dark night and even though we were in a motorboat the current was too strong for us.

"I've had accidents, was chased by moreys, and when they bite you their teeth feel like thousands of needles. I have a scar on my arm from a bite by a coffer fish, but I swear to you that after I hauled it into the boat, I ate it raw. I've also caught lobsters. With a fishing line in your hand, it's an amazing feeling when you get a bite.

"Sometimes when I fished, I would get so engrossed in the sea, with so many colors, that I would forget about the world."

MAMÁ CARIDAD

The sea flows through his veins, his slave skin comes from his great-grandmother, who was taken from islands tossed on the edge of Africa by a powerful hand. From Cape Verde, powered by sailing ships and the lashing of whips, Mamá Caridad arrived with a deep song in her throat.

"I'm white and I'm black, and my family is of many colors. My great-grandmother was a pitch-black woman with huge breasts, and that's why I paint black women with large breasts. My great-grandmother was a slave, and she was called Caridad Cabo Verde. More than one of my paintings is titled Mamá Caridad, but I don't have clear memories of her.

"I paint her features from my imagination and I also have taken features from black street peddlers in Baracoa. I do remember that she used to make sweets, and she was kind in a way that's hard for me to define. I believe in that, and I don't make a distinction between rich and poor, I love them the same."

He can't go deep-sea fishing anymore, and it's not because he's 50 years old. Varicose veins, probably aggravated by his constant bicycling from school to a small parcel of land in the '90s, put an end to his favorite pastime.

But, as we already know, Caboverde is not a man to complain. And he surprises us with this revelation: "The toughest thing for me hasn't been to paint, or to work the fields, but to do this interview." And I see a bottle that has helped him deal with the pressure he has withstood with so much sincerity and grace.

"Look at the sea, look." he says. "I can't fish anymore, but it doesn't matter, I have the sea right there. I stared at it and I think I can see the future, I can see life.