Eusebia Cosme Almanza (5 March 1908 – 11 July 1976) was a Cuban poetry reciter and actress who gained widespread fame in the 1930s. Because of racial segregation, Cosme did not pursue an acting career in the traditional Cuban theater, instead focusing on the art of declamation, or poetry reading. She was the sole Cuban woman and one of the few black women to participate in African-themed declamation. Her performances went beyond reciting the poems, as she used gestures, facial expression and vocal rhythm to convey the emotion of the written word. Focusing on works that served as social commentary on race, gender, and the disparity of the position of blacks in both Latin America and the United States, Cosme was recognized as a master of her craft. Beginning her career in variety shows, she performed in Cuba until the late 1930s, before embarking on international tours.
In 1938, Cosme moved to the United States. She became a naturalized US citizen in the 1940s. She performed to sold-out houses at venues including Carnegie Hall, The Town Hall, and historically black universities. She performed with both Marian Anderson and Langston Hughes, and brought the works of African-American poets to Hispanic audiences via The Eusebia Cosme Show, which aired on CBS Radio from 1943 to 1945. She performed recitations in the United States through the late 1950s, worked as an abstract painter in the 1960s, and began acting in film and television in 1964. Cosme lived in Mexico City from 1966 to 1973, when she appeared in such films as The Pawnbroker and White Roses for My Black Sister. Her most noted role was as "Mamá Dolores", which she played repeatedly in her career. She first played this character, from Felix B. Caignet's radio drama El Derecho de nacer (The Right of Birth), in a 1955 stage performance in New York City. She repeated it in both the 1966 film and telenovela by the same name. In 1971 she filmed a spin-off, Mamá Dolores. Her performance in the 1966 film was recognized with the Premio Ónix as best actress.
After suffering a stroke in Mexico City in 1973, Cosme was moved to the United States and lived her final years in Miami. Located in Mexico, her effects were donated to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library in Harlem. The archive has become an important resource for academics studying race, gender and social perception of not only Afro-Cubans in her era but also within the wider community of the African diaspora.
Early life
Eusebia Adriana Cosme Almanza was born on 5 March 1908 in Santiago de Cuba to Leocadia Almanza and Germán Cosme. Her father served in the Liberation Army Corps during the 1898 Cuban War of Independence, when the island nation gained its independence from Spain. Her mother was a domestic worker on the estate of Luis Fernández Marcané, a prominent local lawyer, who took charge of Cosme's education. From an early age she developed an interest in stage performances, but found there were few non-white performers in the dramatic and comedic theaters she attended. This led Cosme to believe that she would have no future as an actress, or would be offered only stereotypical roles as a servant or rumba performer.
Cosme enjoyed reciting poetry, though she found little affinity with the white writers who produced the works she read. When she discovered Nicolás Guillén's poetry, focused on African subjects and black culture, she found her performance medium. Between 1926 and 1927, she studied at the Conservatorio Municipal de Música de Habana (Municipal Conservatory of Music of Havana), graduating with a diploma. Soon after completing her schooling, Cosme performed as a cupletista in a melodramatic, singing cabaret performance at the Teatro Neptuno. From the late 1920s to early 1930s, she was often listed in playbills as part of the cast of various variety shows. Returning to Santiago, she improved her skill in declamation techniques by performing for the Fernández Marcané household and made her public debut in Santiago in 1930. The household returned to Havana when Fernández Marcané served in the Senate and in 1931, she began lessons in elocution at the Municipal Conservatory's Academy of Declamation studying with Graziella Garbalosa, the academy's director and founder.
Garbalosa encouraged Cosme to develop her individuality and embrace her African roots to distance herself from her white peers by vocalizing and expressing her own cultural background. Through the use of popular dialect and by creating elaborate interpretative routines, with vivid backdrops, props, and flamboyant costumes, Cosme recreated scenes using exaggerated gestures to convey the emotion of the poetry. Her costumes reflected the mood of the piece. If, for example, she was speaking about the struggles of black mothers, she wore a traditional Cuban peasant dress adorned with a kerchief. She also used a typical costume of rumba dancers, a dress featuring a tightly fitted bodice with a deeply ruffled skirt, to set the scene for more rhythmic, celebratory poems. She designed her sets and chose the accompanying music, becoming an artistic director of each performance, rather than simply a performer.
Cosme was trained in the tradition of poseía negra, a specific type of recitation of poetry which is tied to the African experience, with particular attention to the irony of blacks' peculiar societal position in the wake of slavery. Originating in the Antilles, the genre is often synonymous with Afro-Cuban poetry, though there were numerous artists from other islands, such as Puerto Rico. The performance is closely tied to the ethnic and cultural experiences of mulattos (mixed-race people) navigating in a white-dominated culture. The reciters, known as declamdores cubanos or simply recitadores, were predominantly male, with Cosme being the sole exception. Their recitations followed musical rhythms of the danzón and rumba while simultaneously using traditional Spanish verse forms. The movement flourished from the mid-1920s to mid-1930s in the Spanish Caribbean. In the absence of women writers of the period, Cosme recited poems written by men, but her emotional interpretations and performances elevated her to an artistic level beyond simple recitation. She saw her role as an essential bridge between the poet and listener, whereby she recreated the written text as an expression of feeling and consciousness.
Cuban career
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, 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.