Eusebia Cosme

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When Fernández Marcané and his family moved back to Santiago, Cosme remained in the city and took up residence with an aunt. To pay the rent on her apartment, she took in students from the neighborhood. In 1932, Cosme gave a declamation for a hurricane benefit, appearing on stage with Ignacio Piñeiro. In her first major speaking engagement in Havana on 16 March 1933, Cosme recited a tribute to the Spanish actor, José González Marín at the Payret Theater. By this time, she had developed a standard format, divided into three sections, each featuring five to six declamations, grouped according to their social message and rhythm. In 1934, she performed in Camagüey and then at the Lyceum, a women's organization frequented by white middle- and upper-class women. That summer, she took part in an event sponsored by the Hispano-Cuban Institution of Culture, winning rare praise from the organization's president, Fernando Ortiz. He called her an artist with a finely developed mastery of the aesthetic expression of Cuban culture who moved her audience to tears. She went on to perform in August at the Principal de la Comedia earning praise from Chic Magazine, which dubbed her "the greatest artistic attraction" that month in the capital.

In 1935, she returned to the Principal de la Comedia reciting works by Emilio Ballagas, Regino Boti, Félix B. Caignet, Nicolás Guillén, Luis Palés Matos, and José Antonio Portuondo, among others. Rafael Suárez Solís, the critic for El País declared there were no comparisons for her artistry. A featured article on Cosme in the November 1935 issue of Adelante described her as "black emotion, voice and rhythm, harmoniously vibrating in the flesh and grace of woman". By 1936, Cosme regularly featured in speaking engagements and on radio programs such as CMCG's Hora Sensemayá. She began to appear in more elite venues, like the Casino Español and the Teatro Martí, and joined the Society for the Study of Afro-Cubans. Making her first foray abroad, she performed in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where she earned mostly positive reviews for her performances. She was also praised for sharing works by Ballagas, Guillén and Palés with her audience. As she developed her craft, Cosme expanded her repertoire to include works from other poets of the African diaspora. It took on a more complex continental feel, including works from African-American, Afro-Puerto Rican, and Afro-Venezuelan poets. At the end of the year, when she returned to Cuba, Cosme was honored by the city of her birth in a celebration where she was granted the title Hija Predilecta (Favorite Daughter) of Santiago.

Immigration and speaking career

In 1938, Cosme left Cuba for a performance tour in Venezuela, as part of a cultural mission for the Cuban Ministry of Education. She performed in Maracaibo at the Teatro Baralt and later was introduced at the Teatro Nacional in Caracas by Andrés Eloy Blanco. In July, she headed back to the Caribbean to perform at the University of Puerto Rico, in Río Piedras. She appeared in 18 performances over the month and made trips to study Afro-Puerto Rican culture in Loíza Aldea and Machuchal, areas known for their African traditions. While in Puerto Rico, she decided to visit the United States and sailed from San Juan to New York City, arriving on 22 August 1938. Within a month, Cosme was scheduled to appear at Carnegie Hall. She performed on 4 December to a sell-out crowd of more than 3,200 people who paid $6 per ticket to hear her perform. The tour included performances at Howard and Yale Universities and events in which she opened for Marian Anderson, a noted African-American singer. Cosme focused on themes in her repertoire that spanned the experiences of Afro-Antilleans, from celebrations of culture to suffering and struggling to survive, as well as exploring the stereotypical fears mainstream society had of blacks. She also used her declamations as a way to provoke analysis of racial and gender perceptions of identity. Probably in the early 1940s, she married a white Puerto Rican mechanic, Rafael "Felo" Laviera, from New York.

Cosme appealed to diverse audiences, who each had their own perception of her. Latin American publications categorized her as Afro-Latina; mainstream media in the United States and Europe depicted her as an exotic, tropical personality; while the African-American community saw in her the broad historical connections of the diaspora. Until she arrived in the United States, most of her recitations had been based upon white, Latino authors. After her arrival in New York, she focused on works of black artists and was able to introduce the works of literary figures such as Joseph Seamon Cotter Sr., Paul Laurence Dunbar, and James Weldon Johnson to Hispanic audiences. Her space was unique, as comparison between her and Ethel Barrymore, and other prominent white actresses in both American and Cuban entertainment, failed to recognize that they were not allowed to perform in the same spheres. Additionally, comparison could not be made with African-American actresses, as their cultural experiences were different. As a mulatta and Latina, Cosme could and did perform in cosmopolitan venues featuring her international appeal as a Latin American; similar spaces would not have been open to "Negro", African-American artists. Though she performed in Spanish, she was embraced by the African-American community, with newspapers and reviewers stressing that language was not a barrier. Comparisons were made between opera and her recitations, showing that her mastery of gestures, facial expressions, and rhythm conveyed the message of the performance making words unnecessary.

In 1940, she appeared at Northwestern University in a program sponsored by the Institute of Spain in the United States and soon after the performance went to Mexico City to be presented at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. She performed at the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia before returning to Sugar Hill in January 1941. She composed the song Fue en el África (It Happened in Africa), which was recorded by RCA Victor featuring Ernesto Roca later that year. She was naturalized as a United States citizen in Laredo, Texas in the early 1940s. In 1942, she again performed at Carnegie Hall and the following year played at The Town Hall. Beginning in 1943, she had her own radio show, The Eusebia Cosme Show, which aired on CBS and was broadcast throughout the Americas on La Cadena de las Américas (Network of the Americas) for the next two years. She had return engagements at Howard University in 1944 and 1946 and at The Town Hall in 1945, where she recited poems by Jesús Colón and Alberto Socarrás in honor of Antonio Maceo's hundredth birthday. In May 1946, Cosme collaborated with Langston Hughes in Cuban Evening: The Poems and Songs of Nicolás Guillén by Katherine Dunham. They recited poetry by Guillén and Eartha Kitt sang at the event. In 1947, she performed at the Club Cubano Inter-Americano in New York City, during the anniversary celebrations of the Grito de Baire.

In another collaboration with Hughes, which included Ben Frederic Carruthers and Arna Bontemps, Cosme performed in 1949 in Carruthers and Hughes' translation of Guillén, which they called Cuba Libre. In 1952, she returned to Cuba for the first time since 1938, taking her husband with her. She was celebrated in her performance at the Universidad de Oriente in her home town, and received the Orden Nacional de Mérito "Carlos Manuel de Céspedes" (Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Order of National Merit). However, she was refused inclusion in the official centennial celebrations planned for José Martí. She was not able to perform in Havana until May 1953, when she was featured at the Pro-Arte Musical Auditorium. She returned to New York, where her husband died by the middle of the decade. In September 1955, she was cast as "Mamá Dolores" in a stage production of Félix B. Caignet's radio drama El Derecho de nacer (The Right of Birth), which played at the Teatro Santurce, located at 1421 5th Avenue, near 116th Street. In 1956, she performed in the Recital de Poesía Afro-Antillana sponsored by the Puerto Rican Society of Journalists and Writers and held at The Town Hall and in 1958, she recited at Fairfield University, winding down her declamatory career.

Artistic and film career

Cosme began to paint and exhibited abstract paintings in such venues as the annual Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit through the early 1960s. In 1964, she made her film debut playing in The Pawnbroker with Rod Steiger under the direction of Sidney Lumet, which aired in 1965. Cosme moved to Mexico City in 1966, living at the Hotel Insurgentes. Her film roles there were often stereotypical as domestics or a celibate, aging surrogate mother. She appeared in a film version of El derecho de nacer, reprieving her role as "Mamá Dolores", under the direction of Tito Davison. She was recognized as the "best actress" of 1966 for her role in the film and was awarded the Premio Ónix by the El Instituto y la Escuela de Cultura Cinematográfica at the Universidad Iberoamericana (The Institute and School of Cinematographic Culture of the Ibero-American University), the educational department charged with developing a national film industry in Mexico. The prize was widely acknowledged as a national mark of excellence. Also in 1966, Telesistema Mexicano (TSM) adapted the work for a telenovela of the same name with Cosme again playing "Mamá Dolores", in a production directed by Ernesto Alonso.

In 1968, Cosme appeared in another TSM telenovela Tres vidas distintas (Three Distinct Lives), under the direction of Carlos Salinas and the following year, she starred in Rosas blancas para mi hermana negra (White Roses for My Black Sister) with Libertad Lamarque. In the film, Cosme is killed in a traffic accident and her heart is donated to Lamarque's daughter. In 1971, she worked in the telenovela Cristo negro directed by Tony Carbajal and featured in the movie Vuelo 701 (Flight 701), a thriller in which a series of events prevents some of the passengers from boarding the doomed flight traveling from Acapulco to San Francisco. Davison directed a spin-off of El derecho de nacer in 1971, called Mamá Dolores, in which Cosme starred in the title role. Her last film, El derecho de los pobres (The Rights of the Poor), directed by René Cardona, was released in 1973 and though she was scheduled to make Negro es un bello color (Black is a Beautiful Color) in May 1973, Cosme was debilitated by a stroke and was placed in the American Benevolent Society in Mexico City. A prominent American actor paid for her to have nursing care and eventually arranged for her relocation to the Miami Convalescent Home in South Florida in early 1974.

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