On Latinx Globalities: the case of African cosmopolitanism in Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez and Víctor Hernández Cruz

This essay offers a literary history that corrects the notion that Latinx writers are exempt from cosmopolitan preoccupations. I address the undertheorized internationalism with Africa of two renowned Latinx writers: Víctor Hernández Cruz and Elizabeth “Betita” Martínez. Building from the critical analysis in Latinx studies that renders legible the liberationist pursuits of late twentieth-century Latinx writing, this intervention shows how African geopolitical tensions also become prominent spaces of engagement. For Cruz, I focus on the ways in which North Africa has featured prominently in his poetry since 1991. Internationalist activist Martínez, on the other hand, advocates for an international education, following Frantz Fanon’s pleas, implemented in her political autobiography De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century (1998). Her archival documents likewise speak to her immersion in African politics. The transatlantic links these authors make ultimately serve to challenge anti-black attitudes in the Latinx population. Both writers engage in a curiosity about and empathy for different African regions that reconceptualize south-south engagement while challenging normative idealizations of cosmopolitan theory.