José Martí delivered this speech on December 19, 1889, at the Latin American Literary Society of New York, in the presence of the delegates attending the Pan-American Congress being held in Washington. Presenting his Latin Americanist ideas, Martí warned about the potential danger posed by imperialist trends in the United States.
Ladies and gentlemen:
Our tremulous and exuberant thoughts, in the short time that discretion demands, are hard pressed to put into words the joy that overflows from our souls on this memorable night. What can the imprisoned son say when he sees his mother again from behind the bars of his cell? Talking is a small thing and almost impossible, more because of its personal and haphazard content and the throng of memories, hopes and fears than because of the certainty of not being able to give one’s utterances worthy expression. For the man who sees himself surrounded by the nations we love with a religious passion, in the person of their illustrious delegates, whatever he could say would be intemperate and chaotic. When he sees how, by secret mandate, men have increased their stature and women their beauty to receive them; when he sees the dark and leaden air enlivened as if with the shadows of eagles about to take flight, of heads passing by and shaking their admonitory crests, of lands imploring, pale and stabbed, without the strength to pull the dagger out of their hearts, his words would be empty phrases. When he sees the shadow of the magnanimous fighter of the North, on the porch at Mount Vernon, give his admiring hand to the volcanic hero of the South, he vainly tries to gather the horde of feelings beating against his breast, like some over-patriotic spirit, and all he finds are discordant strophes and untamed odes with which to celebrate the visit of the absent mother in the house of Our America, and tell her, in the name of men and women, that the heart can find no better use than to wholly surrender to the messengers of the American nations. How can we pay our illustrious guests for this hour of joy? Why must we hide with the duplicity of ceremony what we see in these faces? Trim your rhetoric with other vignettes and bells and gold fringe; tonight we have biblical eloquence flowing as restlessly and cheerfully as a brook, from the generosity of the heart. Which of us will deny, on this night when no lies are told, that no matter how many roots our faith or affections or habits or business affairs may have in this land of unrestrained hospitality, no matter how lukewarm the faithless magic of ice may have left our souls, we have felt — ever since learning that these noble guests were coming to see us — as if there were more light in our houses, as if we were walking with a livelier step, as if we were younger and more generous, as if our earnings were greater and more certain, and as if in a vase without water there were flowers budding? And if our wives want to tell us the truth, are they not telling us with their loyal eyes that certain fairy feet never went through the snow more happily; that something asleep in the heart, in the incomprehension of foreign soil, has suddenly awakened; that a joyful canary has been flying in and out of the windows these days, back and forth incessantly and unmindful of the cold, with ribbons and bows in its beak, because for this celebration of Our America no flower seemed delicate and exquisite enough? All this is true. Some of us have been brought there by misfortune; others by legend; others by commerce; others by the determination to write, in a land that is still not free, the final stanza of the poem of 1810.1 Others are ordered to live here by a pair of blue eyes, as their acceptable command. But no matter how great is this land, or how anointed the America of Lincoln may be for the free men of America — for us, in our very heart of hearts where nobody dares to challenge or take issue with our secret feelings, the America of Juárez2 is greater because it has been more unhappy, and because it is ours.
In apostolic days North America was born from freedom at its fieriest. The new breed of light-crowned men were not willing to bow before any other. Impelled by the mind, the yoke of human reason that was vilified in empires created at sword’s point, or with diplomacy, by the great power-crazed Republic, broke into pieces from everywhere in those nations born of an amalgamation of smaller nations. Modern rights sprang from the small and autochthonous regions that had formed their free character in continuous struggle, and they preferred independent caves to servile prosperity. A king who came told a man who addressed him familiarly and did not remove his hat in his presence to establish the Republic. The 41 souls from the Mayflower together with their women and children, defy the sea and on an oaken table of an anteroom establish their community. They carry loaded muskets to defend their planted fields; the wheat they eat, they plow. A land without tyrants for the soul without tyrants is what they seek. In long jacket and felt hat comes the intolerant and irreproachable Puritan who despises luxury because men lie for it. In waistcoat and knee breeches comes the Quaker, and with the trees he fells he builds schools. Then comes the Catholic, persecuted for his faith, and founds a State where nobody can be persecuted for his faith. The gentleman arrives in fine woolen cloth and plumed hat, and his very habit of commanding slaves gives him the insolence of a king wherewith to defend his freedom. One of them brings in his ship a group of Negroes to sell, or a fanatic who burns witches, or a governor who refuses to listen to anything about schools. The ships bring men of letters and university scholars, Swedish mystics, fervent Germans, French Huguenots, proud Scotsmen, thrifty Batavians. They bring plows, seeds, bolts of cloth, harps, psalms, books. The settlers live in houses built with their own hands, masters and servants of themselves. And as a recompense for the tiring task of contending with Nature, the brave colonist found satisfaction in seeing the old woman of the house, in hairnet and apron, come with blessing in her eyes and a tray of homemade sweets in her hand while one daughter opens a hymnal and another plays a prelude on the zither or the clavichord. School was taught by rote and with the lash, but going to it through the snow was the best kind of schooling. And when couples trudged along the road, faces to the wind — the men in leather jackets and carrying shotguns, the women in heavy flannels and carrying prayer books — they were usually bound for church to hear the new minister who refused to give the governor power in the personal aspects of religion, or they were on their way to elect their judges or call them to account. No un scrupulous breed of men came from outside. Authority belonged to all, and was given to whomever they desired. They elected their own magistrates and governors. If the governor was unwilling to convoke the council, the “free men” did so over his head. The taciturn adventurer there hunted both men and wolves in the woods, and could sleep well only if he found a recently fallen tree trunk or a dead Indian for a pillow. And in the manorial mansions of the South, all was minuet and candlelight, and choruses of Negroes to greet their master as his coach drew up to the door, and silver goblets for the fine Madeira wine. But nothing in life was not food for freedom in the republican colonies that received certificates of independence from the king rather than royal charters. And when the Englishman, for granting them that independence in the capacity of master, levied a tribute which they resented, the glove that the colonies threw in his face was the selfsame one that the Englishman himself had put upon their hands. They led a horse to their hero’s door. The nation that was later to refuse to help, accepted help. Triumphant freedom is like it: manorial and sectarian, with lace cuffs and a velvet canopy, more a matter of location than of human weakness, a selfish and unjust freedom teetering upon the shoulders of an enslaved race of men who before a century had passed hurled the litter to the ground with a crash. And ax in hand, out of the tumult and dust raised by the falling chains of a million emancipated men, emerged the woodcutter with the merciful eyes! Over the crumbling foundations of the stupendous convulsion rode Victory, proud and covetous. The factors that set the nation upon its feet appeared again, accentuated by war, and beside the body of the gentleman, dead among his slaves, were the Pilgrim (who refused to tolerate a master above him or a servant below him, or any conquests other than those made by the grain of wheat in the earth and by love in the heart) and the shrewd and grasping adventurer (born to acquire and to move forward in the forests, governed only by his own desires and limited only by the reach of his arm, a solitary and dreaded companion of leopards and eagles) — both Pilgrim and adventurer fighting for supremacy in the Republic and in the world.
And how can one fail to remember, for the glory of those who have known how to conquer, in spite of them, the confused and blood-soaked origins of Our America, although the faithful memory (more necessary now than ever) may be stained with untimely senility by the one whom the light of our glory — the glory of our independence — had hindered in the work of compromising or demeaning that America of ours? North America was born of the plow, Spanish America of the bulldog. A fanatical war took from the poetry of his aerial palaces the Moor weakened by his riches; and the remaining soldiers, reared to heresy on hate and sour wine and equipped with suits of armor and arquebuses, rushed upon the Indian protected by his breastplate of cotton. Ships arrived loaded with cavaliers in their half-cuirasses, disinherited second sons, rebellious lieutenants, hungry clergymen and university students. They brought muskets, shields, lances, thigh guards, helmets, backplates, and dogs. They wielded their swords to the four winds, took possession of the land in the name of the King, and plundered the temples of their gold. Cortés lured Montezuma into the palace he owed to the latter’s wisdom or generosity, then held him prisoner there. The simple Anacaona invited Ovando to one of her festivities to show him her country’s gardens, its joyful dances, and its virgins, whereupon Ovando’s soldiers pulled their swords from beneath their disguises and seized Anacaona’s land. Among the divisions and jealousies of the Indian people, the conquistador pushed on in America. Among Aztecs and Tlaxcaltecas, Cortés reached Cuauhtemoc’s canoe. Among Quichés and Tzutuhils, Alvarado was victorious in Guatemala. Among the inhabitants of Tunja and Bogotá, Quesada marched forward in Colombia. Among the warriors of Atahualpa and Huáscar, Pizarro rode across Peru. By the light of burning temples the red banner of the Inquisition was planted in the breast of the last Indian. The women were carried off. When the Indian was free his roads were paved with stones, but after the Spaniard came he had nothing but cow paths used by the cow as she went nosing her way to the pasture, or by the Indian deploring how wolves had been turned into men. The Indian worked for what the Spanish commissioner ate. So many Indians died, like flowers that lose their aroma, that the mines had to shut down. Sacristans grew rich on the trimmings of their chasubles, and gentlemen went on walks, or burned the King’s colors in a brazier, or watched heads fall in fights between viceroys and judges, or in rivalries among the commanders. When the head of a family wanted to mount his horse, he kept two Indian pages for the stirrups and two boys for the spurs. Viceroy, regent and town council were appointed from Spain; when the town councils assembled, they were branded with branding irons. The mayor ordered the governor to stay out of the town because of the harm he did to the Republic, ordered the councilman to cross himself when entering the town council, and ordered 25 lashes for any Indian who galloped his horse. Children learned to read by means of bull fight posters and highwaymen’s jingles; the schools of rank and prestige taught them “contemptible chimeras.” And when groups of people gathered in the streets, it was to follow the old hags who carried proclamations, or to talk in hushed voices about the scandal of the judge and the heavily veiled woman, or to go to the burning of a Portuguese where a hundred pikes and muskets led the procession, and where the Dominicans with their white crosses and the grandees with their staffs and rapiers and gold-embroidered hoods ended it. There were trunks full of bones carried on the back and flanked by torches; the guilty with ropes around their necks, their sins written upon their head coverings; the stubborn with pictures of the enemy painted upon their sanbenitos. There were the distinguished gentlemen, the bishop, the higher clergy; and in the church, between two thrones brightly lit by candles, the black altar. Outside, the bonfire. At night, dancing. The glorious Creole falls bathed in blood every time he seeks a way out of his humiliation, with no guide or model but his honor, today in Caracas, tomorrow in Quito, thereafter with the common people of Socorro! Either he buys, hand to hand, the right to have Bolivian councilmen in Cochabamba,3 or he dies like the admirable Antequera,4 professing his faith on the scaffold in Paraguay, his countenance glowing with happiness; or growing weak at the foot of Chimborazo, he “exhorts the people to strengthen their dignity.” The first Creole born to a Spaniard — the son of Malinche — was a rebel. Juan de Mena’s daughter, in mourning of her father, dons her festive attire and all her jewels, for the day of Arteaga’s death is a day of honor for all of humanity! What is happening so suddenly to make the whole world pause to listen and marvel and revere? From beneath the cowl of Torquemada5 comes the redeemed continent, bloody and with sword in hand! All the nations of America declare themselves free at the same time. Bolívar appears with his cohort of luminaries. Even the volcanoes acclaim him and publish him to the world, their flanks shaking and thundering. To your horses, all of America! And over plains and mountains, with all the stars aflame, redemptive hoof beats resound in the night. The Mexican clergy are now talking to their Indians. With lances held in their teeth, the Venezuelan Indians outdistance the naked runner. The battered Chileans march together, arm in arm with the half-breeds from Peru. Wearing the Phrygian or liberty cap of the emancipated slave, the Negroes go singing behind their blue banner. Squads of gauchos in calfskin boots and swinging their bolas go galloping in triumph. The revived Pehuenches, hair flying and feathered lances held above their heads, put spurs to their horses. The war-painted Araucanians, carrying their cane lances tipped with colored feathers, come running at full gallop. And when the virgin light of dawn flows over the cliffs, San Martín appears there in the snow crossing the Andes in his battle cape — crest of the mountain and crown of the revolution. Where is America going, and who will unite her and be her guide? Alone and as one people she is rising. Alone she is fighting. Alone she will win.
And we have transformed all this venom into sap! Never was there such a precocious, persevering and generous people born out of so much opposition and unhappiness. We were a den of iniquity and we are beginning to be a crucible. We built upon hydras. Our railroads have demolished the pikes of Alvarado. In the public squares where they used to burn heretics, we built libraries. We have as many schools now as we had officers of the Inquisition before. What we have not yet done, we have not had time to do, having been busy cleansing our blood of the impurities bequeathed to us by our ancestors. The religious and immoral missions have nothing left but their crumbling walls where an occasional owl shows an eye, and where the lizard goes his melancholy way. The new American has cleared the path among the dispirited breeds of men, the ruins of convents, and the horses of barbarians, and he is inviting the youth of the world to pitch their tents in his fields. The handful of apostles has triumphed. What does it matter if, when emerging as free nations and with the book always in front of our eyes, we saw that the government of a hybrid and primitive land (molded from a residue of Spaniards and some grim and frightened aborigines, in addition to a smattering of Africans and Menceys) should understand, in order to be natural and productive, all the elements that rose in a marvelous throng — by means of the greater politics inscribed in Nature — to establish that land? What does it matter if there were struggles between the city of the university and the feudal countryside? What difference if the servile marquis felt a warlike disdain for the half-breed workman? How important was the grim and stubborn duel between Antonio de Nariño6 and St. Ignatius Loyola?7 Our capable and indefatigable America conquers everything, and each day she plants her banner higher. From sunrise to sunset she conquers everything through the harmonious and artistic spirit of the land that emerged out of the beauty and music of our nature, for she bestows upon our hearts her generosity and upon our minds the loftiness and serenity of her mountains. She conquers everything through the secular influence with which this encircling grandeur and order has compensated for the treacherous mixture and confusing of our beginnings; and through the expensive and humanitarian freedom, neither local nor racial nor sectarian, that came to our republics in their finest hour, and later, sifted and purified, went out from the world’s capitals. It was a freedom that probably has no more spacious site in any nation than the one prepared in our boundless lands for the honest effort, the loyal solicitude, and the sincere friendship of men. Would that the future might brand my lips!
Out of that troubled and sorely tried America, born with thorns upon her brow and with words and the heart’s blood flowing out through the badly torn gag like lava, our eager strivings have brought us to Our America of the present, at once hard-working and heroic, frank and vigilant, with Bolívar on one arm and Herbert Spencer on the other. It is an America without childish jealousies or naive trust, fearlessly inviting all races to the fortunes of her home, because she knows she is the America of Buenos Aires’ defense and of Callao’s endurance, the America of Cerro de la Campanas and of the new Troy. And would she prefer the hates and appetites of the world instead of her own future, which is that of bringing equity and justice in an atmosphere of unrestricted peace, without a wolf’s greed or a sacristan’s admonitions? Would she rather disintegrate at the hands of her own children than undertake the grandiose task of becoming more firmly united? Would she desire to lie, because of neighboring jealousies, instead of following what is written by the fauna and stars and history? Or would she prefer to act as a legend to anyone who might offer her his services as a footboy, or go out into the world as a beggar to have her cup filled with terrible riches? Only self-created wealth and freedom earned by one’s hand can endure, and it is for good. Whoever dares maintain that she would compromise, does not know Our America. Rivadavia,8 the man always seen in a white cravat, said that these countries would save themselves, and so they have. The sea has been plowed. Our America also builds palaces, and gathers the useful surplus from an oppressed world. She also contributes her forests and brings it the book, the newspaper, the town and the railroad. And Our America, with the sun on her brow, also rises over deserts crowned with cities. And when the elements that formed our nations reappear in this crisis of their elaboration, the independent Creole is the one who prevails and asserts himself — not the beaten Indian serving as spur boy who holds the stirrup — and puts his own foot into it so that he can be higher than his master.
That is why we live here with such pride in Our America, to serve and honor her. We certainly do not live here as future slaves or dazzled peasants, but as people able and determined to help a man win esteem for his good qualities and respect for his sacrifices. The very wars that are thrown in her teeth by those who misunderstand her out of pure ignorance, are the seal of honor for our nations that have never hesitated to hasten the course of progress with the enriching sustenance of their blood, and that can display their wars like a crown. Devoid of the friction and daily stimulus of our struggles and passions that come to us from the soil where our children have not been reared — and from a great distance! — in vain does this country invite us with her magnificence, her life and its temptations, her heart and its cowardice, to indifference and forgetfulness. We are taking Our America, as host and inspiration, to where there is no forgetting and no death! And neither corruptive interests nor certain new fashions in fanaticism will let us be uprooted from her! We must show our soul as it is to these illustrious messengers who have come here from our nations, so they may see that we consider it faithful and honorable. We must convince these delegates that a just admiration and a usefully sincere study of other nations — a study neither too distant nor myopic — does not weaken the ardent, redemptive, and sacred love for what is our own. Let us allow them to see that for our personal good — if there is any good in the conscience without peace — we will not be traitors to that which Nature and humanity demand of us.
And thus, when each of them, content with our integrity, returns to the shores that we may never see again, he will be able to say to her who is our mistress, hope and guide: “Mother America, we found brothers there! Mother America, you have sons there!”