Translating the Anglophone Caribbean in Cuba’s Casa de las Américas: The ReArticulation of Discourse on Our America

Abstract

While Casa de las Américas is recognized as one of the most influential cultural magazines in the Latin American intellectual field, its role in promoting literary translation has received little attention. This article focuses on how the magazine has translated and spread knowledge of literature written in the Anglophone Caribbean, one of the areas with the largest presence in the magazine during the 1970s. This interchange articulated a new dimension of the magazine’s discourse regarding Our America, which sought to establish unity among underdeveloped countries throughout the Americas as a means to assert regional and national identities amidst the onslaught of cultural imperialism. The enormous number of translations that Casa published in this period constitutes a milestone in the history of translation in the Caribbean and Latin America. The analysis in this article looks to dissect the exchanges, focusing on intersections of similarities and difference.