New York, February 28, 1887
Fermín,
My father has just died, and a great part of me with him. You can’t imagine how much I loved him after I discovered, under his humble exterior, all the integrity and beauty of his soul. I had thought that my suffering couldn’t be greater, but it is, for now I will never be able to love and boast about him as I wished, so that all might see and reward him in the last years of his life for that vigorous and proud virtue that I myself didn’t fully appreciate until mine was put to the test. My grief is true and great, Fermín, but the courage and nobility you have just shown have managed to console it. We haven’t written each other for some time, but I have just read your letters in La Lucha and the account of what is worth even more than they — the action of yours that led to them — and I cannot repress a desire to embrace you.
You have done, with singular dignity, what perhaps no one else would have decided to do. You have done it as truly great things are done, without pomp or hatred. Your moderation in justice will have earned you the respect of the very ones who wanted to offend you and will still the tongues of the envious, whom you must have met already, for nothing attracts them so surely as does character. You have served well the peace of our country, the only possible peace, without lies or dishonor, which must be based on the charity of the vanquished and the subduing and confounding of the wicked. You, calling without anger for the killers to confess to their crime, have sowed for the future with a surer hand than those who fan unfounded hopes or make threats that cannot be carried out, or for which they do not prepare with determination and wisdom. In one of the saddest, most eventful episodes in our history, you have preserved for us the incalculable strength of the victims. If we had had the misfortune to have been at war, it could be said, Fermín, that you alone have defeated many battalions.
I don’t want to talk about myself. What will become of me, now that I have no way of serving my homeland effectively? Acts such as yours are the only things that pull me out of this anxious agony for a while — this agony about which nothing should be said, because com plaints dishonor the speaker. I know well that my land has all of the virtues required to make it respected and happy at last. It grows in the same thing that seems to dismay, strengthens its spirit with patience and common sense, and is gaining in goodness and energy. Everything will be possible there, because most Cubans are good people. And you, Fermín, are one of the best, for, at times and in situations that becloud men’s vision and lead them to act without restraint, you have managed to be just without being vengeful. That is what I praise about you, and in acting thus you have served your home land best. You must be happy that you have managed to control your wrath and, in a tragic and memorable time, satisfy the ghosts of your brothers.
All that remains of my soul is yours.
José Martí