Ana Oramas, also known as Anita Oramas, asserted at a political thought forum (named after Victoriano Ríos) held at the venerable Royal Society of Friends of the Country in Tenerife, that teachers have “utterly no idea” about Canarian culture and identity. Regardless of the subsequent apology from the illustrious first vice president of the Canarian Parliament; in politics, what matters is the initial blow to the head. I won’t support the indignation of the historic backlash against a group that harbours within its midst an endearing educational failure, but I will stipulate that no one in the Canary Islands has “utterly no idea” about the idiosyncratic mishmash that sets us apart. Among other matters, as mentioned by the Gran Canaria professor Francisco Morales Padrón: we are unaware of the B-side of the domination of islanders by the Castilians, nor do we have any evidence of a text different from the imposed A-side. The absence that shrouds the remote past of the islanders in mystery, soothes any dark legend of genocidal overtones, and allows blabbermouths like the aforementioned to flaunt their creation of Canarian identity in front of others. But it must be acknowledged that these deficiencies, far from harming us, have benefited us in pursuit of a very cosmopolitan culture, a Canarian way of being that surpasses any nationalistic limitation. This elasticity that evokes nostalgia (and contemplation) for that annihilated and forced antiquity, but also infuses a creative oxygen that transcends poetry, music, narrative, cinema and art. A mature blossoming that would not have been possible without the interpretation that each Canarian has made of the ambiguous darkness of their identity references, always on the verge of being found, but never discovered, or pending on the slope of categorization: the file against the drowsiness crust, another rhythm of a sharp timple or a Caribbean salseo, which fell upon these smoked Islands. The sting of a wasp renders futile any merciless pursuit of the blame that Oramas has unloaded onto the teaching staff. An identity? How many? Where? At what cost? Utterly clueless.
