José Martí and the social movements of his time (+Español)

Martí was, at the same time, a man of thought and action, and a poet in verse and in action. He who declared that he had cast his lot with the poor of the earth in stanzas that all Cubans know by heart, also said, in a masterful essay that became the epitome of the genre in the Spanish language: “With the oppressed, we had to make common cause, to strengthen the system opposed to the interests and habits of command of the oppressors.”¹

His knowledge of the social movements of Our America was very broad, and he used this information for the theoretical design of his project for a republic and, above all, for the campaign of ideological preparation and organization of the Necessary War.

There are documents that prove that during the period of his residence in Guatemala (1877), he had already proposed to write a history of the Cuban Revolution.² He left some notes that show the detailed study of events, men, battles, campaign culinary practices, medicinal remedies, etc. This study was not only a response to the patriotic passion of the young man who was deported and could not participate in the conflict: with it he prepared himself to not make the same mistakes of 1868 in the future war, and to take advantage of all the successes and lessons of the generation of the founding fathers.

I will limit myself in these notes to his interest in the independence forces of the continent, although it is worth mentioning, at least in passing, that he also dedicated reflections and analysis to the workers’ movements of his time in each of the countries he visited, especially in Mexico and the United States.

One of the fundamental texts in this regard is undoubtedly “Three Heroes,” which appeared in the first issue of The Golden Age, in July 1889:

Mexico had brave men and women, but they were not many, but they were worth many: half a dozen men and one woman were preparing the way to free their country. They were a few brave young men, the husband of a liberal woman, and a village priest who loved the Indians very much. A sixty-year-old priest. Since he was a child, the priest Hidalgo was of the good race: of those who want to know. Those who do not want to know are of the bad race. Hidalgo knew French, which at that time was a merit, because few knew it. He read the books of the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who explained the right of man to be honorable, and to think and speak without hypocrisy. He saw the black slaves, and was filled with horror. He saw the Indians being mistreated: they are so meek and generous, and he sat among them like an old brother […]³

The way he describes the origins of the conspiracy that led to Mexico’s independence, intentionally avoiding the names of those involved, who are fused into the anonymous mass of the people, attests to his adherence to the just demands of the great majority. His piety was not the passive and dramatic kind that leads to sterile lament, but rather that which consciously assumes its duty to abolish injustice at any price, even at the risk of life.

At the end of that same year he took up the subject again in his speech known as Mother America, delivered on December 19, in the tribute that the Spanish-American Literary Society of New York paid to the delegates to the Pan-American Conference. In a hostile, dazzling environment, full of risks and seductions, Martí aims to raise the self-esteem of our peoples, in epic prose, which with the use of the historical present contributes to the optimistic tone and the legendary look at continental history:

All the peoples of America declare themselves free at the same time. Bolívar emerges with his cohort of stars. The volcanoes, shaking their flanks with thunder, acclaim and proclaim him. On horseback, all America! And the redeeming helmets resound in the night, with all the stars alight, over plains and mountains. The priest of Mexico goes speaking to his Indians. With lance in mouth, the Venezuelan Indians cross the naked stream. The broken men of Chile march together, arm in arm, with the cholos of Peru. With the Phrygian cap of the freedman, the blacks go singing, behind the blue banner. In poncho and colt’s boots, waving their balls, the squadrons of gauchos go, in triumphal flight. The resurrected Pehuenches ride, their hair loose, flying the feathered spear over their heads. Painted for war, the Araucanos come stretched out on their necks, with their tacuarilla lances crowned with colored feathers; and at dawn, when the virgin light spills over the cliffs, San Martín can be seen, there on the snow, crest of the mountain and crown of the revolution, who goes, wrapped in his battle cape, crossing the Andes. Where is America going, and who unites and guides it? Alone, and as one people, it rises. It fights alone. It will win, alone.

This speech is rightly seen as a kind of prologue to Our America, an essay that represents the highest point of the definition and analysis of continental culture, and in which the image of unity in diversity is expressed as achieved and triumphant, to reinforce how urgent it is.

The social movements of Lincoln’s America did not escape his attention. The war of independence of the Thirteen Colonies, with its aristocratic heroes, was a frequent presence in his work. In Vindication of Cuba, on March 25, 1889, he refuted the accusations of “inferiority” against Cubans launched by the American press, where we were branded as cowards and our Ten Years’ War was described as a “farce.” Among Martí’s arguments, his assessment of the internal and external conditions that favored the triumph of that feat stands out, very different from those that led the Cubans to defeat. Months later, in his speech known as Mother America, he returned to the subject to characterize the inconsistencies of the northern neighbor:

His hero has his horse brought to his door.

The people who would later refuse to help accept help. The freedom that triumphs is like him, stately and sectarian, with a lace cuff and a velvet canopy, more of the locality than of humanity, a freedom that totters, selfish and unjust, on the shoulders of a slave race, which within a century throws the litter to the ground with a jolt […]⁵

The line in italics refers to the United States’ failure to recognize the belligerence of the Cubans during the Ten Years’ War. This was the only collaboration that was expected of them; but the suggestion also points to the fact that they did not learn — and this is still valid today — the lesson of solidarity that they received from France at the dawn of their own independence, which they would not reciprocate even a few years after the generous gesture: in 1793, in response to the demand of revolutionary France, at war with Great Britain, Washington declared neutrality.

In 1776 they won partial freedom, favorable to the wealthy classes of European origin and white skin. It was not until the Civil War (1861-1865) that slavery was abolished in the great power. The supposedly “inferior” peoples, like Cuba, did not betray the ideal of liberty, equality, fraternity: our first act of rebellion was to free the slaves, who joined their former masters in the fight against the colonial government.

Martí studied the Civil War in detail, as shown by the masterful profiles of several of its leaders, among which those of Generals Grant (1885) and Sheridan (1888) stand out. In these, his vision of the war is somewhat romantic, and he always insists on the abolition of slavery as the fundamental cause.

In his article “The Truth about the United States,” which appeared in the newspaper Patria on March 23, 1894, when he was already immersed in the preparation of the Cuban War of Independence, he establishes an interesting comparison between the two Americas. He would then say the following: “In a single war, the war of Secession, which was more a dispute between North and South for the predominance of the republic than to abolish slavery, the United States lost […] more men than all the republics of America have lost together in the same time and with the same number of inhabitants […]”⁶ after having become independent from Spain.

His interest in social movements and the study of their potential, successes, failures, and forms of organization undoubtedly influenced his conception of the Necessary War. A war that had to be loving, brief, aimed at achieving all justice and exalting the full dignity of man.

Marlene Vázquez Pérez, PhD in Literary Sciences. Researcher and professor. Director of the Center for Martian Studies in Cuba.

References

¹ JM: “Nuestra América”, Obras Completas, Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1975, p. 19. (En lo adelante OC).

² Véase al respecto [Fragmentos para el libro sobre la Historia de la Revolución Cubana], OCEC,t. 5, p. 322 y siguientes.

³ JM: “Tres Héroes”, OC, t. 18, p. 306.

⁴ JM: “Discurso pronunciado en la velada artístico-literaria de la Sociedad Literaria Hispanoamericana”, OC, t. 6, p. 137-138.

⁵ JM: “Discurso pronunciado en la velada artístico-literaria de la Sociedad Literaria Hispanoamericana”, 19 de diciembre, 1889, OC, t. 6, p. 135. Cursivas siempre mías.

⁶ José Martí. OC, t. 28, p. 290-294.

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