This talk was originally presented at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation and as part of the Hispanic Heritage Month celebration at the Puerto
Rico Federal Affairs Administration, NYC.
On September 18, 1898, the
New York Herald and Le Temps of Paris wrote:
Last night the celebrated Puerto Rican agitator Dr. Betances died at the age of 71 in Paris. Well known for his scientific research, he was a revolutionary fighter for the independence of Puerto Rico and Cuba, and a fervent abolitioner….Let’s respectfully salute the memory of this indefatigable fighter whose name belongs from now on to history. This was Dr. Ramon Emeterio Betances, who is often referred to as the Father of the Puerto Rican nation, and “el doctor de los pobres” (the doctor of the poor).
His passionate fight for justice, his anger at slavery--which helped liberate tens of thousands in the Caribbean from the oppression of the Spanish crown at the end of the 19th century--can be a means of our seeing what we most need to know about anger, and I’ll be speaking some about his life a little later and what I learned about him from Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education, with whom I have the honor to study, in a recent class.
I believe the most
comprehensive understanding of anger was given by Eli Siegel, founder of this
education. He defined anger as “pain with the desire to destroy the cause of
it.” And he showed this crucial thing: there are two kinds of anger that come
from different sources in the self:
A good anger has like of the world in it, has respect for the world in it; and a bad or hurtful anger has dislike of the world in it, or contempt for the world in it.
I Had These Two Angers in the Caribbean
Born on the island of
Puerto Rico, I was in a terrific mix up between a good and bad anger. When I
was 10, a school in the countryside was damaged after a hurricane. I was angry
that the local government was slow to help, and volunteered to collect supplies
and books for the children. This anger came from my hope to respect people and
have a good effect, and I felt proud.
Meanwhile, as the first
son and grandson in my family, I was doted on by my parents, grandparents and
aunts, and few things were denied me: from specially prepared meals, trips,
plenty of toys, a go-cart at age 11, and many compliments, which made me feel superior.
It made me angry when other people, shopkeepers, teachers, and other children
did not see the immense value I had. I wanted things on my terms and got
annoyed, for example, when I had to wait in line; that math was so complicated;
or if I had to walk more than three blocks to buy something.
I was a little tyrant, un
pequeño tirano. After just three piano lessons I insisted that I needed an
organ to practice on. When my parents said it was better to wait until I
improved, I threw a tantrum and got the organ. But after a few weeks, it became
an unused piece of furniture. I angrily felt, “It’s too hard to learn all those
notes!” And for years, the sight of the organ made me feel ashamed and angry.
As I grew older, I could
be outwardly affable and seem easygoing, yet inwardly I often seethed. Since I
thought angry people were unlikable and rude, I cultivated an inner life that
never saw the light of day, where I made fun of people, felt that persons who
had different opinions from mine—which were many—were ignorant and that the
world was one impediment after another. In his lecture, Eli Siegel describes a
“quiet kind of anger,”
the kind that is smooth disappointment—where we act as if the world will never really please us. [And he explained] All anger would like to become contempt. Anger has pain in it, but contempt is inward bliss.
One form this quiet anger
took in me was how I collected grievances in my mind; I never forgot or forgave
what I saw as an insult. In an Aesthetic Realism consultation early in my
study, I spoke about how I was still angry at a friend from high school for the
way he made fun of me. My consultants explained: “A grudge is a very popular
way to store some anger and maintain the option of getting angry whenever you
want.” And they asked about my desire to hold on to my grudges:
Consultants: Has it made you weaker or stronger? For example, when you have a grudge, how does the world look to you? Does anything else exist besides the person you have a grievance about?Jaime Torres: No. Everything else is in the background.Consultants: And at that time are you interested in whether the person has any accurate criticisms of you?Jaime Torres: That is the last thing in my mind.
These questions were
liberating. They had me rethink decisions I’d made to nourish my anger with
people, feeling it made me superior and noble. I began to see that the
consequences of this unjust anger were my feeling separate and unable to care
for anything or anyone.
He Made a Different Choice; or Betances, A Fighter for the People
In the lecture I am quoting from, Siegel said:
What differentiates a handsome anger from an ugly [one] is whether [it] is narrowly personal, is all for the advancement of ego...,or is for something beautiful and just.
These sentences comment
on the work and life of Ramon Emeterio Betances who was born in the town of
Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico on April 8, 1827.
As a doctor, he did
important research on eye disease, the cause of miscarriages, and the treatment
of cholera. He was also a writer and diplomat. But he is best known for his
anger at the cruelty of slavery and his work to end it. He had a beautiful fury
at the injustice of Spanish colonialism, becoming a leading force for the
independence of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. One of his
biographers describes him as the “obstetrician” tending to “the birth of Puerto
Rican nationality.”
Ramon was the fourth of
six children born to Felipe Betances and Maria Alacan. Though his father, a
Spanish merchant born in the Dominican Republic, was of mixed blood, he himself
owned slaves who worked in his hacienda. When Ramon was nine, his mother died
and he was sent to live with family friends in Toulouse, France to get a better
education.
Later, as a medical
student at the University of Paris, he was in the midst of the revolution of
1848. In that year he wrote, “I reported to duty… and became a fighter for the
freedom of all peoples.”
When he returned to
Puerto Rico he found an impoverished island, ruled by a tyrannical Spanish
governor and wealthy sugar cane barons. His biographer, Felix Ojeda wrote: “the
main objective was to use...our people to produce sugar...to be sold in the
United States and England...It was pure exploitation.”
Betances had an anger
that was kind. His biographer describes what he saw: slaves enduring beatings;
their teeth pulled out for eating the sugar cane while working in the fields;
some even taking their own life to put an end to their suffering. Inspired by
the American abolitionist John Brown, Betances worked with others to end this
brutal institution. His anger sometimes took the form of a good cleverness. For
example, he arranged to buy children of slaves just before they were
baptized—when they would cost less—giving 25 pesos to the parents so they could
buy their child’s freedom, and receive what was called "aguas de
libertad"--the “waters of liberty.”
This and other courageous
acts infuriated the authorities. Threatened with exile, he left Puerto Rico in
1858, eventually coming to New York City where he founded the Revolutionary
Committee for the Independence of Puerto Rico and Cuba and held meetings a few
blocks from here on Houston Street. In September of that year, his carefully
planned uprising to liberate Puerto Rico from the Spanish crown, was put down
in a few days, during which many died or were arrested. This is known as the
“Grito de Lares,” the insurrection of Lares.
Betances returned to France heartbroken but vowing to continue fighting.
Betances returned to France heartbroken but vowing to continue fighting.
Meanwhile, there was
another kind of anger in this courageous man—one that was narrowly personal
which I think tormented him and made him weary. I’ll say something about this
in a moment.
Love and Anger: For or Against the World
One of the mistakes men
make about love—and it’s a huge one—is using a woman he cares for as a haven, a
consolation in a world he sees as harsh and against him. And men have gotten
very angry when the loved one shows she’s not just an adoring adjunct. When I
met Donita Ellison, a tall, beautiful woman from Missouri who was a teacher, I
was swept by the passionate way she spoke about education and her students
combined with her easy Midwestern manner. With every conversation, the world
looked better to me, and when I asked Donita to marry me she said yes.
But like men in the 19th
century and today, I also resented having to think deeply about Donita and the
fact that she had different opinions from mine and even sometimes had the nerve
to offer some useful criticism of me. I’d seemingly agree, but would battle
with her in my mind, saying to myself, “I’m a good husband, I provide well,
don’t drink or smoke or stay out late, and I’m doing good work—she should be
happy with this good husband!”
Donita was not adhering
to my picture of a loving, devoted wife—and I was angry in a way of which I
wasn’t proud.
When I told about this in
an Aesthetic Realism class, Ellen Reiss asked me if I
felt my ideal was to be completely adored and completely unbothered. It was,
and I’ve seen this to be so with many men. I said that I sometimes didn’t even
want to talk with Donita about work I care for very much on behalf of a just
health care system--and which Donita is also very much for. Ellen Reiss said:
The thought about a woman’s inner life can seem very different from thinking about what is fair to people in a large way.
Jaime Torres. Yes, I think I’ve seen them as too different.
And she asked: “what is the relation between trying to understand the depths of a woman close to one, and fighting hard so that people everywhere are seen justly?” She explained: good will, the desire to have someone else stronger is the purpose that relates the personal and the wide, care for one person and justice to people in general. I’m grateful to be in the midst of studying this with my wife whom I love very much.
Though Ramon Betances and
I are very different—I believe he needed to hear what Ellen Reiss said to me.
As I was preparing for this seminar, in order to understand him better, I
wrote to her asking if she could look at and discuss some of Betances’ writing
both in Spanish and French, including verses and a short story. She did, and
the discussion that followed--only a little of which I can present here--was
magnificent in scholarship and deep understanding of the self of this man.
I respect Ms. Reiss enormously
for the care with which she placed Betances in relation to persons important in
literature at the time he was at the University of Paris in 1857--Gautier,
Baudelaire, Flaubert, Mallarme. She said Betances’ courage was tremendous, and
meanwhile, there were things in his life that needed to be understood.
I had written to Ms.
Reiss about a tragic happening in relation to love. When in exile in Paris, he
brought to France the young woman he cared for, María del Carmen Henri,
nicknamed Lita.
They planned to marry on May 5, 1859, but Lita fell sick with typhus and died two weeks before their wedding. He was devastated and also tremendously angry, writing for example:
She left me alone in this cruel world!... She was pure reason and love...my sacred oracle… All joy has been taken away from me for the rest of my life.
Who Lita was we don’t
know. Meanwhile, in his letters he wrote of this young woman with great praise,
describing her as the smartest person he knew, the purest and humblest. He even
says she was beloved by thousands in Paris, though she had been there but two
months.
Ms. Reiss said: “A large
question...is how did he see this lady?” I said it is clear he felt very angry
at her death, and she said, yes: ”Anger is here, but along with anger, I also
think he felt guilty about her.” And she asked:
Ellen Reiss: Do you think people who have fought for justice have had questions about how they have seen people close to them? Do you think...the way Betances saw this young woman and the way he saw a possible revolution went together or were they in two different parts of his mind?Jaime Torres: I think they were in different parts of his mind.Ellen Reiss: This is a very important person and very praiseworthy, but like any person he could be asked: “Dr. Betances, did you make Lita apart from the world?”Jaime Torres: I think he did.Ellen Reiss: When you try to make someone apart from the world and as an answer to all your questions and they are taken from you, you can be very angry.
And she said that
Betances, with all his courage, likely lacked a deep courage as to a woman, the
courage to want to know her deeply. I wish Betances could have heard questions
like these; he would have felt understood, and it would have lessened his pain
and made him sure of the best thing in him.
Though he spent the rest
of his life in exile in France he never gave up his ideals and his fight for
justice to people in the Caribbean. From Paris he celebrated the abolition of
slavery in Puerto Rico in 1873; and he continued to work for the independence
of the Spanish colonies, even as many people asked him to compromise; and many
wealthy landowners undermined his work.
In 1882 he wrote a poem
titled “Exilio y Libertad,” “Exile and Liberty.” In the class I’m telling
about, Ms. Reiss translated and discussed this poem, and though she said it did
not have the poetic music necessary to make it authentic poetry, she respected
the important sentiment in it. She said:
There are things in it that are very deep... It moves me; this is a person trying to say that with all he’s been though, he still had what he began with, still loves the cause for which he gave his life. This alone should make one respect this man.
I will conclude with his poem in Spanish and then in Ms. Reiss’ translation. In it,
we see Betances trying to give form to the anger in him that was on behalf of
the beauty of the world.
Destierro y LibertadEn horas de tristeza,! Cuánto dolor he hallado en mi camino!Destierro y Libertad, ¡cuánta grandezaY miseria encerráis a un tiempo mismo!Ora la altiva frenteHe visto prosternar a los proscriptosY a lágrimas sumirse débilmente…Humillada a las plantas de tiranos,Augusta Libertad, ora te he visto,Y a muchos renegar de sus hermanosCon torpe labio y corazón mezquino…Más cada vez, con entusiasmo férvido,Exclame:-¡Libertad, tú siempre irradias!Faro de luz esplendidoEs para mí tu frente soberana.Tu canto, siempre intrépido,En acorde potente al bronce lanza,Y-¡luchad!- nos repite; ¡que el destierroEs el bautismo de la Santa Causa;Es reto con el pueblo,La redención política prepara…Destierro y Libertad, ¡por eso os amo!Exile and LibertyIn hours of sadness,How much pain have I found on my road!Exile and Liberty, how much grandeurAnd misery do you contain at the same time!Now I have seen the lofty browProstrate itself to outlawsAnd in tears sink down, weakly. . .Humiliated at the feet of tyrants,August Liberty, now I have seen you,And [seen] many disown their brothersWith disgraceful lip and puny heart.But each time, with fervent enthusiasmI exclaimed, “Liberty, you always glow!”A splendid beacon of lightYour sovereign forehead is for me.Your song, always courageous,In powerful agreement with your bronze spear,And “Fight!” it repeats to us; for exileIs the baptism of the Holy Cause;It is the threat through which the people,Lashing the face of the tyrants,Prepares political redemption. . .Exile and Liberty, that is why I love you![Translated by Ellen Reiss]