Those of us who live on the islands of Coche, Margarita, or Cubagua answer without hesitation that we are from the state of Nueva Esparta. We say it without thinking, like someone stating their age or their mother's name. There's no reason to dwell on it in everyday usage, but it would only take a moment to pause and discover beneath that answer a decision that is unconsciously reinforced.
The name was bestowed as an honor after the War of Independence, when the archipelago's resistance against the royalist troops was compared to that of classical Sparta. Western tradition taught us to admire that city-state for its warrior discipline and its refusal to submit. That gesture took the form of a tribute, and as such, it was received. However, within that form, a silent imposition operates, for under that narrative, what happened here only acquires value when translated into the language of another continent and another era. Our own history is only named when it finds its mirror in Greece, forcing us to renounce our identity in order to exist solely through our resemblance to what Europe decided deserved to be remembered.
This colonial operation isn't unique to the name of our state; it's the same structure at work when we need to be reminded that the galerón's meter inherits forms from the Spanish Golden Age in order for anyone to pay attention, or that a local myth has the depth of a Greek tragedy in order for it to enter the conversation. The external mirror functions as a certificate of existence. Without it, what is ours remains in a zone of silence where it may be real but lacks words in the terms recognized by the dominant order.
A few miles from the city where I live, on Margarita Island, lies an island that bears a different name, untouched by any foreign tribute. It is Cubagua, whose name in the Cumanagoto language can be translated as "place of crabs." In local lore, it is said that the crab walks sideways, backward, or in circles, a movement that at first glance seems erratic or even comical, but which is the way this body relates to its territory. The crab avoids moving in a straight line because the world it inhabits has a different shape. It skirts, circles, and finds the crevice between the rocks. In this movement, indecipherable as "progress" to a hurried observer, it always finds its way back home.
In the name of the neighboring island, we find the first manual of marronage produced by this territory. The name Cubagua already described the method long before the Spanish décima arrived to evangelize and ended up singing the opposite, or before the Calvary cross was filled with flowers to become a tree of life. It is about ignoring the straight line imposed by the official path, moving sideways, retreating, and turning until finding the opening that power failed to foresee, and from there, continuing to exist.
The two names coexist in the same archipelago without anyone noticing the tension between them. One seeks entry into the Western narrative through the door of resemblance and needs the mirror of Sparta for resistance to count as resistance. The other never asked permission to name what it does. While one waits to be recognized, the other was already being. This difference reveals the gap between a practice that needs validation from an external authority and an action sustained by the body, independent of the observer's judgment.
The path back to a territory is often imagined as a straight line. But we know that the territory one encounters upon returning is different from the one left behind, and the one who returns is not the same as the one who left. The return, then, illustrates the movement of a crab that skirts what has changed, retreats over the familiar, and traces circles around what has been lost until it finds the crack through which that territory remains what it always was, beneath all the imposed names.
The author
Oscar Lloreda Oliversp is a writer, researcher, and Director General of the Culture Office of the state of Nueva Esparta. His works Imperial Ektasis, Enormous Love, and Cubagua 2.0 develop the conceptual framework of this series by defining ero-politics as the force that the system identifies and never manages to extinguish, and the enormous as the surplus that dominant history cannot contain.
The Descomunal Project, a line of research conceived from his work at Celarg, is the direct genealogy of this column. His current institutional position serves as the living point of contact with the communities, creators, and practices that the text analyzes.
