1 That we have been summoned here, in the very heart of Nottingham, to reflect upon the role played by migration and exile in the process of Cuban national development prompts us to consider similar displacements of other people during other times and places. We would not have been able to do this during childhood or adolescence when we heard that legendary murmur of justice from Sherwood Forest for the first time, but we might attempt it at present now that such a murmur merges with other experiences, both political and human. There is something that rings especially true for us today in that story from a distant time: the story of Richard the Lionheart, who was already fueling the flames of a clash of civilizations, waging an all-out crusade against the Saracens. Perhaps it is the internal conflict of one of Richard’s own subjects, the young William Fitzooth, a resident of these lands, who attempted to position himself beyond the disputes between Normans and Saxons on the grounds that he “was already beginning to feel that he was neither Norman nor Saxon, but British.”1 Or consider the case of his son, Robert Fitzooth— or Robert of Huntingdon or simply Robin Hood, as he would soon be known throughout this entire region and the rest of the world—who would not have to confront such dilemmas because he had been born with a destiny, a double mission with which his own grandfather entrusted him when taken in his arms for the first time: “May you be true to the soil of England and bring help to the downtrodden all your days!”2 It would be fitting to ask ourselves if such a charge still makes sense to us today. Might it be that those values—patriotism and a sense of justice, the latter being expressed in terms of solidarity with the needy, the wretched of the earth— ended up diluted by the alchemy of postmodern discourse? Or, to phrase the problem from a contrasting standpoint, are we certain that such values do not constitute part of the issue that concerns us here today?