Chapter 1. Cuba’s Most Universal Man
1. See http://www.josemarti.cu/visitas/casa/PhotoViewer.html.
2. See Nydia Sarabia, La Patriota del Silencio, for a full discussion of the topic.
3. Epistolario, photo section at the end, no page number.
4. Martí, Complete Works, 18: 285. All citations from Martí, unless otherwise indicated, are from the 28-volume Complete Works (Obras completas) or the Critical Edition of Martí’s works (Edición crítica, indicated by EC) and are given in the text by volume and page number. All translations, unless otherwise indicated, are mine.
5. Among the categories are “the bocabajo (face-down flogging of a slave) in Hanábana; Isidoro in Batabanó, awaiting my verses, seated at my feet; José (fidelity); the old man in the presidio (like a broken oak: desolated majesty; Simón (Eloquence); the handsome black man in Manuel’s house (his severed hand); the (hobbled) black with fetters (going toward the ranch) talking to a black woman and she with a torn shirt leaving one breast exposed; chains” (18: 285). The descriptions of Tomás and the listed categories appear in a group of notes under the title “Books,” so it is fair to assume that Martí considered developing these notations further. The listed categories are revealing. They recognize qualities that are positive (fidelity, majesty, eloquence, handsomeness) and yet link slave existence to a realm of suffering: bocabajo, broken, desolated, severed, torn, exposed, chains (18: 285).
6. María García Granados is universally known to Cubans as “la niña de Guatemala” (the girl who died of love). See Martí, Versos Sencillos: A Dual-Language Edition, 116, for a complete explanation.
7. A fascinating and sympathetic account of the life of Carmen Zayas Bazán can be found under the heading “Family articles” on the website of Eduardo Zayas-Bazán: http://www.eduardozayas-bazan.com.
8. Versos sencillos is a book of forty-six rhymed poems. The title belies an easy translation into English, although conventionally scholars and translators have used “Simple Verses” as the translation. The problem with this is that the verses are complex, not simple, and so a facile translation conveys a false message. In my 2005 translation of the poems (A Dual-Language Edition), I explain rather than translate the title. In this book I maintain the Spanish original title.
9. For a complete explanation of how Martí’s verses were combined with a popular Cuban melody and were later popularized by Pete Seeger, see Martí, Versos Sencillos: A Dual-Language Edition, 12–13.
Chapter 2. Martí and Race, an Overview
1. Notes from a talk by Ibrahim Hidalgo Paz at El Cacahual on May 29, 2011. Hidalgo Paz further explains that the designation of Mariana Grajales as Madre de la Patria has come into vogue in recent years, in part, as a response to manifestations of racial discrimination in Cuba. The source for the tribute, he says, is Martí, who wrote two articles about Maceo’s mother for Patria on the occasion of her death in Jamaica in 1893. Martí says that the Cuban people—all of them, rich and poor, arrogant and humble, sons of the masters and sons of servants—mourn her passing. And he concludes the first article by proclaiming that Patria in its crown of flowers for her tomb should put just one word: “Mother!” (5: 25–26).
2. The criticism and commentary about Martí is immense, so my review of what has been written about Martí and race is of necessity selective. For a bibliography that includes many relevant works, see Montero’s José Martí: An Introduction. Space does not allow for comment on Gustavo Pérez Firmat’s important work on Cuban culture and identity, The Cuban Condition: Translation and Identity in Modern Cuban Literature.
3. Martí’s memories of 1862 are a capsule history of what African slaves endured: the middle passage, disembarkation, unrelenting brutality, and death as the end to suffering. They are also a reminder of a significant difference between slavery in Cuba and slavery in the United States in 1862. Martí saw slaves arriving from Africa because the slave trade continued in Cuba until the 1860s to replenish the supply of workers. In the United States, in the same time period, slave populations were maintained primarily by natural reproduction.
4. Ortiz gives the example of Martí’s July 1882 letter to the Cuban mulatto General Antonio Maceo (1: 172) as an illustration of Martí’s acknowledgment of and confirmation of the legitimate aspirations of Cuba’s black population (21).
5. Interest in Ortiz’s contributions to Martí studies and his role in elucidating Martí’s antiracist stance remains strong. See “La huella martiana en Fernando Ortiz,” by Luis Ángel Argüelles and the review “Los estudios martianos de Fernando Ortiz,” by Dionisio Poey Baró. Poey Baró is also the author of excellent articles about Martí and race. An example of recent writing in Cuba with a connection to the United States, albeit in very general fashion, is José Martí: Del antiesclavismo a la integración racial, by Carlos Alberto Mas Zabala, with a chapter titled “King Cotton.”
6. Many current books study Martí. I can include only some of the most persuasive and relevant examples. Translating Empire, by Laura Lomas, casts the topic of Martí and race in the context of socio-political conditions and critical theories, with a focus on critiquing earlier scholarship. Some of the book’s problems are succinctly described in Alfred J. López’s review “Lost in Translation: José Martí and the New American Studies.”
Manuel Tellechea’s José Martí blog (http://www.josemartiblog.blogspot.com/) also challenges Lomas on many points, including the claim that “Had Martí lived anywhere besides the racially terrifying center of imperial modernity, Martí may not have assumed the explicitly anti-racist stance that Afro-Antilleans … included at the heart of their pro-independence organizing” (Lomas 18). As Tellechea states: “Martí had no need of anyone to inculcate in him the evident fact of the brotherhood of man.”
7. A contrast between Guerra’s version and other translations in English reveals markedly divergent interpretations of these lines: “El indio, mudo, nos daba vueltas alrededor, y se iba al monte a la cumbre del monte a bautizar sus hijos. El negro, oteado, cantaba en la noche la música de su corazón, solo y desconocido, entre las olas y las fieras” (6: 20).
Guerra writes: “The Indian, mute, would make circles around us and would run off to the hills to baptize his children. The black, always surveiled, sung in the night the music of his heart, alone and unknown, among the birds and the beasts” (31). Guerra’s version includes an apparent mistranslation of olas (waves) as birds (aves).
Esther Allen translates: “The Indian circled about us, mute, and went to the mountaintop to christen his children. The black, pursued from afar, alone and unknown, sang his heart’s music in the night, between waves and wild beasts” (Martí, Selected Writings, 293).
Juan de Onís, a superb translator of Martí’s essays, rendered the lines in a way that also digresses from Guerra’s interpretation: “The Indian circled about us in silent wonder, and went to the mountains to baptize his children. The runaway Negro poured out the music of his heart on the night air, alone and unknown among the rivers and wild beasts” (Martí, America of José Martí, 146).
John J. Hassett in Looking North renders the lines as: “The Indian, silent, circled us in wonder, and then went into the mountains to baptize his children. The scrutinized black, alone and unknown, sang his music from the heart among the rivers and the wild beasts” (26).
For the Heath Anthology, Enrique Sacerio-Garí gives this translation: “The Indian, silenced, was roundabout us, and would go to the mountains to baptize his children. The Negro, looked down upon, poured out at night the music of his heart, alone and unknown among the waves and the wild” (Lauter 1097).
And John D. Blanco in appendix 1 of his translation of Julio Ramos’s Divergent Modernities translates: “The Indian, mute, walked slowly around us, and went off to the mountain, to the summit of the mountain to baptize his children. At night, the scorned Negro sang in the music of his heart, alone and unknown, amid the waves and wild animals” (299).
8. See Martí, Versos Sencillos: A Dual-Language Edition, 99, for a translation of this poem.
Chapter 3. Black Cubans in the United States
1. See Mañach’s description, 144–45. Blanca Z. de Baralt also gives an account of the event, 97–98. In the Steck Hall lecture, according to Baralt, “Martí employed just the right message for each group present: he even touched on the racial issue, assuring the blacks and mulattoes (there were a goodly number of them seated in the very back rows of the hall) that they were indispensable to the triumph of Cuban arms just as the Indians had been to the armies of Bolívar, Páez and San Martín in the South American Wars of independence” (98). Baralt confirms that the speech profoundly moved those in the audience, some to tears, some to shouts of encouragement, and that Martí left the hall that night with newly minted fame.
2. See Kanellos, 8–20, for a full discussion.
3. See “Cuba’s Only Hope,” Pittsburgh Dispatch, August 6, 1892. An August 5, 1892, front-page article in the New York Times includes a portion that Martí translated directly. The quote was: “Martí is great in his way: that is as orator and poet, and general littérateur. But he is wildly visionary. In fourteen years of absence from Cuba he has not been able to observe the changes that have taken place. It is noble of him to devote his life to the education and uplifting of the Cuban negro, but it is wrong of him if he encourages the forming of expeditions whose mission can only be to cause useless bloodshed and a more terrible régime.”
4. Gerald E. Poyo’s book “With All, and for the Good of All” gives a full accounting of the different Cuban communities in Florida (1948–1998), their divergent political ideologies, and the race-based dimensions of the independence cause among those groups, including the divisions between those in Tampa and those in Key West.
5. The long and complex history of race relations between Cubans and Americans, both black and white, and the role of Spanish and Italian immigrants in Florida, especially in Tampa, goes far beyond the scope of this text. Books by Greenbaum, Ronning, and Poyo address these topics.
6. According to Tinajero, the lector practice did not take place in Cuba from 1868 to 1882, so its function in the United States helped to keep the practice going (83).
7. The translated citation is from Tinajero. Martí’s quote in Spanish is from the Complete Works, 5: 43.
8. In a letter written to Ruperto and Paulina at the end of January 1895, Martí says that Gonzalo de Quesada will make a short visit to Tampa, and he asks them to sell their house to support the Cuban cause (4: 50). While the Pedrosos were generous and willing to sacrifice for the Cuban effort, it appears that they did not sell their house at this time. See Greenbaum, 77–79, for a detailed explanation.
9. Cited in Toledo, La madre negra de Martí, 104–5: “Martí! Te quise como madre, te reverencio como cubana, te idolatro como precursor de nuestra libertad, te lloro como mártir de la patria. Todos, negros y blancos, ricos o pobres, ilustrados o ignorantes te rendimos el culto de nuestro amor. Tú fuiste bueno: a ti deberá Cuba su independencia.”
10. General Narciso López was a Venezuelan-born former officer in the Spanish army who supported Cuba’s separation from Spain and joined Cuban annexationist efforts. López and Villaverde were part of an 1848 conspiracy that failed, and Villaverde was jailed for half a year, before escaping to the United States. Once in the States, Villaverde aided López, who was again promoting his separatist cause and had political support from the United States. Villaverde remained in the north, while López was captured and killed in an 1851 attempt in Cuba.
11. In Patria’s September 14, 1894, edition, Zambrana was listed as one of the men who had declared slavery abolished in 1869. According to Martí these men were opening the doors of a new life to “a race … bent over in the sugar cane fields, or hanging in the anguish of suicide from the ceiba trees in the forest” (4: 477).
12. Martí’s relationship to Enrique Trujillo is more complex than this chapter can fully discuss. See Poyo’s book “With All,” 86, and his article “José Martí, artífice de la unidad social,” 493.
13. See Guerra, chapter 1, for a different take on this question.
Chapter 4. African Americans and the Post–Civil War United States
1. The degree of hysteria and bloodlust surrounding the charge of rape (often unfounded) against black men in the 1890s and early twentieth-century South is exemplified by the case of Sam Hose, who was slowly tortured and then burned to death by a mob in Georgia in 1899. See Grant, 162–63.
2. Martí’s translation of the lines from the U.S. press: “‘¡No ofendí a la señora Jewell! ¡me van a matar pero no la ofendí!’” (1507) is suggestive but does not make clear that the black man was put to death because of the charge of rape. The New York Times article of February 21, 1892, “A Negro Burned Alive,” describes the crime in these words: “Ed Coy, the negro who last Saturday evening brutally outraged Mrs. Henry Jewell, a much respected white woman at her house … was captured this morning, and is now in eternity, having atoned in a horrible manner for his fearful crime.” A Texas paper of the same date in a column titled “Burn Him!” gives a report directly from Texarkana that explicitly mentions the “fiendish crime of rape” and includes as subheadings: “Negro Coy Pays the Penalty, of His Atrocious Deed—He Showed No Mercy to His Victim, and None Was Shown Him. The Victim of His Brutality Fires the Funeral Pile That Sends His Guilty Soul into the Black Beyond.”
3. See Baldwin for more information about the stereotypes associated with the Cakewalk.
4. See New York Times articles of February 1892: “More Mistaken Negroes; These Came from Arkansas To Go to Liberia” and “A Lot of Deluded Negroes; Stranded on the Road to Their Promised Land.”
5. Translation by Luis A. Baralt in Martí on the U.S.A., 102. For the original, see Complete Works, 11: 72–73.
6. I have translated freely here. See comments in Grant, The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia, 135: “When Atlanta’s white Republican postmaster, General John R. Lewis, hired a black assistant, both he and the clerk were burned in effigy by outraged Democrats who considered the appointment an outrage to white womanhood.”
7. Headlines such as “Georgia’s Messiah Craze: Negroes of Low Intelligence Becoming Demoralized” heralded the story. See New York Times, July 29, 1889.
8. The McDow case was extensively covered by the press of the time. See, for example, New York Times, June 30, 1889.
Chapter 5. Chronicles of the Crusaders
1. “John Swinton on Slavery,” New York Times, February 17, 1883, 3.
2. Preacher and abolitionist Theodore Parker (Teodoro Parker in Martí’s discourse) was mentioned a single time in association with other free thinkers (23: 96).
3. Martí mentioned Lyman Beecher, the father, principally as a preacher (13: 36–39).
4. See Reynolds, 344. Martí made two brief references to Redpath, linking him to liberal causes and calling him an abolitionist, but made no mention of his role as biographer (11: 256 and 12: 341).
5. If the descriptions seem hagiographic, it is worth noting that Susana Rotker in her analysis of Martí’s Phillips profile says that it is based on the image of Christ (68).
6. Martí’s description of the parade appears to have its basis in press accounts. A New York Tribune piece makes reference to the “Wendell Phillips Labor Club,” “an organization of colored workingmen.” See “Twenty Thousand Men in Procession,” New York Tribune, September 2, 1884, 8.
7. Martí’s wording in translation was “contrato con el infierno y convenio con la muerte” (13: 90). Garrison’s exact words were “a covenant with death and an agreement with hell” (Ruchames 23). The concept derives from the Old Testament, Isaiah 28:18.
8. Douglass’s work was first published in 1845.
9. Both Huggins and Foner give accounts of this incident, which was part of the envoy’s report on his trip to Port-au-Prince. The report is found in the Frederick Douglass papers. See Foner, 432, note 10.
Chapter 6. Native Americans and “Nuestra América”
1. Martí’s translation of Ramona never met with success in Mexico. Jonathan Alcántar has discovered a few scattered literary references to the work, such as a promotional entry of three paragraphs (3) and the reproduction of the book’s prologue (2) in a Mexico City paper on August 13, 1888. But these entries did not move sales. See El Lunes, Periódico de Literatura, Política y Variedades.
2. The initial scene of this work, set in a colonial city where citizenry on their way to mass are confronted by bedraggled Indians, is semi-reprised, almost recreated, at the beginning of the novel Lucía Jerez, written in 1885. See Nuñez Rodríguez.
3. “Saber leer es saber andar. Saber escribir es saber ascender.” I include the aphorism in Spanish to highlight the word andar (to walk), which Martí frequently used in referring to the need for Native Americans to be included in plans for progress in Latin America. See endnote 6 for examples.
4. For Martí’s comments about indigenous Guatemala, see EC 5: 259 and other pages of his book entitled Guatemala.
5. See Gwynne’s 2010 book, Empire of the Summer Moon, for a fascinating history of the Comanches and also a candid account of their primitive ways and many instances of cruelty.
6. The lines in Spanish are: “O se hace andar al indio, o su peso impedirá la marcha” (8: 329) and “Y hasta que no se haga andar al indio, no comenzará a andar bien la América” (8: 337).
7. In fact Martí makes mistakes in several of his references. In writing of Isla de Mujeres in 1877, he refers to the ruins of “Chichén Itzá in Uxmal” (EC 5: 45). Chichén and Uxmal are different sites, as he correctly noted in 1883 (8: 329). In a La Edad de Oro article, “Las Ruinas Indias,” he stated that Palenque was a city of the Mayans of Oaxaca, when in fact Palenque is in Chiapas.
8. Today we know vastly more about the Mayan civilization, its written language, its books, and its literature. We know that the written language had phonetic values and was more than glyphs. It probably would have shocked Martí to learn that Diego de Landa burned twenty-seven Mayan books and a large number of sacred objects in an auto-da-fé in Maní, Yucatán, in 1562, and that he tortured and killed many Mayans. Landa’s Relación de las cosas de Yucatán (Relation of the things of Yucatan), while providing information about the Mayans, also contains distortions, especially in regard to language.
9. In issue 3 of the magazine, Martí takes up the history of Bartolomé de Las Casas, the colonial-era defender of Indians, and he adroitly covers the moral questions that accompany Las Casas, who went from encomendero (owner of Indian workers) to campaigning clergyman, to suggesting that Africans be substituted for Indians, to realizing that that, too, was a mistake. He relates the incident of Las Casas seeing five Indians burned alive on La Española, as an example of Spanish (rather than indigenous) barbarism.
10. The señora’s sister, Ramona Ortegna, had been engaged to Angus Phail but married another man, and when she found herself childless, she took in Angus’s baby girl. When Ramona Ortegna became ill, Angus’s daughter was adopted by the Morenos. The widowed Señora Moreno cared for Ramona out of a sense of duty but lavished her affection on her weakly son, Felipe.
11. See Julio Ramos, Divergent Modernities, which includes John D. Blanco’s translation of “Nuestra América.” Also available are translations of the essay by Juan de Onís, Esther Allen, Elinor Randall, John J. Hassett, and Enrique Sacerio-Garí.
12. The text in Spanish is “que ha de salvarse con sus indios.” The challenge in giving Martí’s intent is illustrated by the differing versions given by translators. Will the sons of America be saved “along with her Indians” (Ramos, Blanco translation, 296); “by its Indians” (America of José Martí, Juan de Onís translation, 140); or “through her Indians” (Selected Writings, Esther Allen translation, 289)? Note the prepositions.
13. Translation by Esther Allen. The relevant citation—“¡Con el fuego del corazón deshelar la América coagulada! ¡Echar, bullendo y rebotando, por las venas, la sangre natural del país!” (6: 21)—points to the difficulty in conveying the image faithfully.
14. Cintio Vitier’s critical edition of the essay is an invaluable guide to understanding “Nuestra América.” Vitier gives a detailed explanation of the Gran Semi. He also discusses Martí’s challenge to Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s Civilization and Barbarism as an implicit defense of the Indian.
15. An essay sometimes referred to as “Madre América” (6: 133–40) has passages that suggest ideas expressed in “Nuestra América.” “Madre América” describes the servitude imposed on Indians by the Spanish and offers strong criticism of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition. It is similar to “Nuestra América” in the appeal to all races and the call for unity.
Chapter 7. Immigrant Communities
1. Not all of the characteristics were products of Martí’s observations. He acknowledges taking concepts from a U.S. writer whom he identifies by the last name Self (8: 382–83).
2. The lynching of the Italians is a complicated story. Although those accused of killing Hennessey were found innocent, a mob attacked the jail and killed eleven Italians. The incident caused a diplomatic crisis with Italy that was resolved with a payment by the U.S. government.
3. In Spanish the quote is “Ser culto es el único modo de ser libre” (8: 289).
4. The quote in Spanish reads: “No hubo un chino cubano desertor, no hubo un chino cubano traidor.” The quote appears in a brief piece by Quesada, “Mi primera ofrenda,” that was published in New York in 1892. In a letter to Gonzalo de Quesada in 1892, Martí encouraged his disciple to publish the work (García Triana, Chinese in Cuba, 185).
5. See photo taken by Anne Fountain and notations about the Chinese in Cuba in Amerasia Journal 28, no. 2 (2002): cover and iv.
6. See García Triana, Chinese in Cuba, xiv.
Chapter 8. Challenging the Colossus: Responses to U.S. Racism
1. The quote came from the July 25 Florida Times-Union.
2. “No Expedition Against Cuba.”
3. Thomas, 214–17.
4. Thomas, 262. Martí refers to the Virginius episode in an April 22 article for Patria (2: 306).
5. Jurmain, passim.
6. Allen, “What Does Nueva York Mean in English?,” 6.
7. Esther Allen’s translation.
8. See Gerome, “Race and Politics in Cuba and the U.S. Intervention of 1912,” and Fountain, “Questions of Race and Gender: Evangelina Cisneros and the Spanish-Cuban-American War.”
9. The Reader’s Companion to Cuba, 69.
10. My references to both of these newspapers are from the translations of the original accounts that appear in the Complete Works, 1: 232–34. The source is a pamphlet called “Cuba and the United States” (Cuba y los Estados Unidos) that Martí produced in 1889. It contained the translation of his letter and translations of the two articles that had prompted his response.
11. In Martí’s Complete Works, “Vindication of Cuba” appears in Spanish translation. For the original and helpful introductory information, see Esther Allen’s Selected Writings of Martí.
12. Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook, 57–61.
13. See Complete Works, 2: 437–38, for commentary about an uprising in Cuba falsely attributed to Martí’s planning and his response to the mistake. Martí mentions the Evening Sun of New York and various newspapers in Philadelphia.
14. As found in his Complete Works, 28: 353–54.
15. Faust’s book shows that in addition to the more than half a million soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, there were untold civilian deaths and a lingering national trauma.
16. See Martí’s articles for El Partido Liberal (Mexico) and La Nación (Argentina) in Complete Works, 7: 36–53.
17. See Fountain, José Martí and U.S. Writers, 117–18, for a full discussion.
18. In December 1889 Martí gave a talk for the Spanish American Literary Society, to which the Pan American Conference delegates were invited. This essay, now often referred to with the title “Madre América,” has many precepts similar to “Nuestra América” and closed with a call for Spanish American pride in “Mother America.”
19. This passage in the Complete Works is 6: 160. I have used Esther Allen’s translation because it is so effective.
20. Cited in Smith, 51.
21. In “Nuestra América,” the United States is identifiable as the “blond nation” that has little regard for “dark complexioned” Latin America (6: 22). These two racial depictions are evocative rather than scientific and illustrate how difficult it is to do justice to Martí in translation. The United States is called “pueblo rubio,” and those of Nuestra América are “trigueños.” Rubio is blond, and trigueño is dark-skinned, olive-skinned, swarthy, or brunette. Martí’s contrast implies contrasting hair color, something hard to convey in English.
Chapter 9. Conclusions
1. One example of the numerous reports on black reaction to the quake was the subhead “Effect of the Shock on the Negroes” in the New York Sun front-page headline “The Ruin in Charleston,” September 4, 1886.
2. The line in Spanish is “y no hay igualdad social possible sin igualdad de cultura” (3: 28).
3. See the chapter on Emerson in Fountain, José Martí and U.S. Writers. Laura Lomas in Translating Empire declares that Martí did an about-face with Emerson in 1883 (140), but she ignores the long and visible Emersonian imprint on Martí and especially the way it impacted his ideas about the equity in nature and thus equity in regard to racial groups. Martí’s works give abundant evidence of Emerson’s pervasive and long-standing influence on the Cuban writer.
4. Martí refers to ñáñigos, members of urban male African societies in Cuba, in an 1892 article in Patria. His reference aimed to show that those who lived in Havana in the midst of ñáñigos on the one hand and damiselas (courtesans) on the other did not understand the quiet but energetic rebellion in their very city and the bravery and suffering of the island (2: 109). Helg in Our Rightful Share gives a full description of the ñáñigos, the history of their associations, their links to dock-workers and attendant corruption, and the perceived threat they posed in the 1880s (29–30). Martí was silent about African mutual-aid societies, the quasi-religious associations for Cuban blacks.
5. See Helg, Our Rightful Share, 80–81.
6. Martí’s “No la ofendí” (I did not offend her/I offered her no offense) does not convey the gravity of the charge. Newspapers in the United States used the word outrage, both as a noun and a verb to mean rape. It is possible that Martí did not understand this usage and took outrage to mean offense. Either that, or he chose to minimize the sexual context.
7. Many questions can arise when Martí’s work is presented through translation and in edited volumes that sometimes distort the context. In this text I do not have space to point to the numerous cases of mistranslations of Martí in regard to race. See the following publications for examples of the problems: Carlos Ripoll, José Martí, the United States, and the Marxist Interpretation of Cuban History, and Anne Fountain, “Foner and Martí: A Review Essay.”