Guillén: “Balada de los dos abuelos” & Mestizaje

You’ll be able to

Analyze how symbolism and contrast convey mixed heritage in Guillén’s poem
Identify anaphora and sensory imagery as tools of meaning
Connect the poem to the theme of societies in contact and shared identity

Two grandfathers, one poet

Nicolás Guillén, a founder of Afro-Cuban poesía negra, opens "Balada de los dos abuelos" with two ancestral shadows: "Sombras que sólo yo veo, / me escoltan mis dos abuelos" ("Shadows only I can see / escort me, my two grandfathers"). One grandfather, Facundo, is African — enslaved; the other, Federico, is European — the Spanish colonizer. The poem stages the encounter of these two lineages inside the speaker’s own body, making mestizaje (racial and cultural mixing) the literal subject: the poet is where two societies in contact become one person.

Symbolism and contrast

Guillén characterizes each grandfather through contrasting sensory symbols. The African ancestor carries "lanza con punta de hueso" ("a spear with a point of bone") and the sounds of drums and the middle passage; the European ancestor wears "gorguera en el cuello ancho" ("a ruff around his broad neck") and bears armor and sails. The poem’s refrain — "Don Federico me grita / y Taita Facundo calla" ("Don Federico shouts at me / and Taita Facundo falls silent") — encodes the power imbalance of conquest: one voice commands, the other is silenced.

Anaphora and the move toward union

The poem’s force builds through anaphora, the repetition of a phrase at the start of lines. In the finale the two grandfathers meet as equals: "—¡Federico! / —¡Facundo! Los dos se abrazan" ("—Federico! —Facundo! The two embrace"). The insistent repetition of "Los dos" ("The two") — Los dos suspiran, los dos… lloran, cantan ("The two sigh, the two… weep, sing") — fuses the opposed histories into a single, shared song, offering reconciliation and a unified Cuban identity born of both roots.

Worked example

Analyze the ending: “—¡Federico! / —¡Facundo! Los dos se abrazan. / … / Lloran, cantan. / ¡Cantan!” How do anaphora and imagery resolve the poem’s central tension?

1.Recall the tension: the poem opened with the grandfathers separated and unequal — one shouting, one silenced.
2.Note the shift to equality: naming them side by side (“¡Federico! / ¡Facundo!”) and having them embrace (“se abrazan”) places the two lineages on the same plane.
3.Track the anaphora of “Los dos” (“The two”): the repeated phrase binds their actions together, grammatically enacting the fusion of the two heritages.
4.Read the final verbs “Lloran, cantan. ¡Cantan!”: sorrow (weeping over a painful shared past) turns to song, and the emphatic repetition of “¡Cantan!” affirms a hopeful, unified identity.

Answer: The repeated “Los dos” and the closing turn from weeping to emphatic singing dissolve the earlier hierarchy of shouting master and silenced slave into a shared voice. Through anaphora and the embrace image, Guillén transforms a violent history of societies in contact into a single mestizo song — the poem’s vision of reconciliation.

Checkpoint

In “Balada de los dos abuelos,” the two grandfathers — one African, one European — function primarily as symbols of:

Watch out

Do not treat the two grandfathers as interchangeable. Guillén marks them with opposed imagery — bone-tipped spear and drums versus armor and ruff — and with a power gap (one grita, one calla). The reconciliation at the end matters precisely because the poem first insists on their difference and inequality.

Checkpoint

The repetition of the phrase “Los dos” at the start of several closing lines is an example of which device, and what does it accomplish?

On the exam

When a poem repeats a word or phrase, name the device (anaphora) and its effect. Credit comes from the second half: here the repetition of "Los dos" does not just sound emphatic — it performs the theme of union that the whole poem drives toward.

Answer the 2 checkpoints as you read.