Hordes of young Africans are swimming north, across the Strait of Gibraltar. Mothers hide their daughters, bishops cross themselves, the newspapers cry rape. The province I was living in at the time is glorified as the place where the Christian Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula began. This, as well as its being the only region not conquered by the Moors, is a source of great micronationalistic pride for the local Asturians. “ Asturias es España, lo demás es tierra conquistada” goes the saying. They even claim celtic ancestry, along with lighter hair and eyes, than their lazy southern counterparts. It is said that Rey Pelayo, blessed by the Our Lady of Covadonga, started throwing rocks at the Moors in 718 ad.

Pelayo remains one of the most common names in Asturias to this day. He might have to start throwing rocks again. Upon my return to the United States a parallel fantasy was waiting for me, only differing from El Negro in that it was molded to North American representations of Blackness. You may know him as Wood Sitting on a Bed, or Huge Penis Guy. Vice Magazine describes him as “ The Man Bigger than the Meme”. The big Black American athlete, three hundred pounds of muscle staring at you, legs open. Dubbed the “ hero of the pandemic” by Know-Your-Meme. This time, the bait was often an irresistible yet unbelievable coronavirus update. The man in the image is the late Wardy G. Joubert III, now available on Covid-19 masks and Christmas socks. The meme, in this case a symbolic instrument of white culture, exists for only a fraction of a second on the viewer’s screen. By its very ephemeral nature it defies contextualization, but white people didn’t start collecting Black nudes today. A chronology was needed to rescue these memes from the retrograde amnesia of cyberspace.

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