In June 2018, while participating in the Caribbean Studies Association conference in Havana, Cuba, as a scholar of Caribbean literature, I had the opportunity to attend an unforgettable panel in Kreyòl (Haitian Creole) and Spanish. A tall man who introduced himself as Hilario Batista Félix extended the audience a warm welcome in Kreyòl. He wore a straw hat typical of Cuban guajiros (farmers), along with a crisp white quayabera shirt traditionally worn by Cuban men. In a voice as soft-spoken as it was dynamic, Batista read selections from his 2017 bilingual collection Nostalji san pwen ni vigil: pwezi kreyòl nan peyi Kiba / Nostalgia sin puntos ni comas: poesía criolla en Cuba (Unbroken Nostalgia: Kreyòl Poetry in Cuba; translation mine; Batistsa 2017; Figure 14.1). Afterwards, Batista's daughter Nathalie Batista Puente sang a captivating rendition of the popular song Viejo while accompanying herself on guitar, wearing a white dress with a red sash (commonly worn in Cuba and associated with the Revolution). The song evoked Jacques Roumains's (1944) novel "Gouveurneurs de la rosee (Masters of the Dew) about the impact of Haitian emigration to Cuba. In any case, the large audience was visibly moved by both performances, as was I. Batista concluded with some remarks about Kreyòl and the Haitian-Cuban community, and he invited everyone to attend a cultural event later that week. As Batista distributed flyers to those departing, announcing a robust schedule of Kreyòl programming on Radio Havan, I became determined to learn more about him, his work, and Cuba's Haitian community, which I had briefly encountered during a research trip to Cuba's eastern region and during the 2015 Festival del Caribe in Santiago De Cuba.

Past, Mariana F. Kreyòl in Cuba: Writing Resistance, Affirming Haitian Heritage. In Ethnographic Insights on Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Melanie A. Medeiros and Jennifer R. Guzmán, 200-212. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023.

Mariana Past is a professor of Spanish at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit University of Toronto Press's Website. https://utorontopress.com/9781487551506/ethnographic-insights-on-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/

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