José Martí,
The United States, and the Marxist...

Carlos Ripoll

NOTES

1. Juan Marinello (1898-1973) was an essayist and poet, for many years the president of the Popular Socialist Party of Cuba (as the communist party was called), delegate to the Cuban Constitutional Convention of 1939, and minister without port Folio under Batista; appointed rector of the University of Havana at the outset of the Castro regime, member of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, and representative of Cuba to the UNESCO.

2. "Martí y Lenín," Repertorio Americano (San José, C. R., 26 January 1935):57.

3. "Carta de Juan Marinello," in Antonio Martínez Bello, Ideas sociales y económicas de José Martí (Havana: La Verónica, 1940), pp. 217-18.

4. Fulgencio Batista (1899-1973), as a sergeant in the Cuban army, led the revolution of September 4, 1933 against a provisional government established after the overthrow of the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado (see n. 9), whereupon he ruled for seven years until he was himself elected president in 1940. When his handpicked successor was defeated in the 1944 election, he turned the government to the democratically-elected president and left the country, but not for good. On March 10, 1952, Batista led a military coup which began the regime ended by the victory of revolutionary forces on December 31, 1958.

5. El caso literario de José Martí: motivos de centenario (Havana: Vega y Cía., 1954), p. 27.

6. On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led the attack on the Moncada army barracks in Oriente Province that began the anti-Batista movement that brought him to power.

7. Nuestra razón: Manifiesto Programa del Movimiento 26 de Julio (Mexico City: Manuel Machado, 1956), p. 2.

8. See ch. 3 in this volume.

9. Gerardo Machado (1871-1939) was elected president of Cuba in 1925. He remained in office by having the Cuban Constitution amended to permit his reelection, but was forced to flee the country on August 11, 1933 by a popular uprising.

10. José Martí, Vindicación de Cuba (Havana: F. Verdugo, 1926).

11. José Martí, Obras Completas (Havana: Lex, 1953); Archivo José Martí (Havana, 1940-44); Obras Completas de José Martí' (Havana: Editorial Nacional de Cuba, 1963); Anuario Martiano (Havana: commenced publication, 1969).

12. "Martí en su obra," in José Martí, Obras Completas (Havana: 1963), 1, 19.

13. Juan Marinello, Once ensayos martianos (Havana: Comisión Nacional Cubana de la UNESCO, 1964), p. 17.

14. José Martí, Inside the Monster: Writings on the United States and American Imperialism, ed. Philip S. Foner, trans. Elinor Randall (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975).

15. Philip S. Foner, A History of Cuba and Its Relations with the United States, 2 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1962-63); The Spanish Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1898, 2 vols. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972).

16. Cuadernos Populares, Historia de Cuba, I (Havana: Páginas, 1944). Containing: "El marxismo y la historia de Cuba," by Carlos Rafael Rodríguez; "Seis actitudes de la burguesía cubana en el siglo XIX," by Sergio Aguirre; and "Raíces de la ideología burguesa en Cuba," by Jorge Castellanos.

17. After acknowledging his "indebtedness for the facilities" placed at his disposal by the Archivo Nacional of Havana and the Library of the City Historian of Havana, Foner thanks Communist historians Sergio Aguirre, Julio Le Riverend, Aníbal Escalante, and Blas Roca "for the opportunity to discuss either in person or through correspondence, certain historical problems relating to Cuban history." A History of Cuba, I, xii.

18. E.g. Foner confuses El Siglo, the famous newspaper founded in Havana in 1861 by the Reformist Party, with El Siboney, the handwritten flier that Martí and some of his classmates distributed in their school in 1869. Ibid., 11, 179. He confuses Patria, the revolutionary periodical founded by Martí in New York in 1892 with another identically titled but founded in Havana in 1901 by the conservative Mario García Kohly. The Spanish-Cuban-American War, II, 591. He describes Martí as having been a "teacher in many universities in Latin America," ibid., p. 12, although it is a well-known fact that Martí's only university teaching experience was in Guatemala and lasted but a few months. And Foner attributes to Martí an ode to the Cuban flag that was composed twenty years after Martí's death by Agustín Acosta, as every Cuban schoolchild knows from the time he attends kindergarten. Ibid., p. 666.

19. A History of Cuba, 11, 285.

20. Obras Completas, IV, 186-87.

21. Ibid., IV, 204.

22. The Spanish-Cuban-American- War, II, xxi.

23. Ramón Luis Miranda (1836-1910) was a Cuban physician who settled in New York and was married to Luciana Govín, one of the wealthiest Cubans of her time, who made substantial monetary contributions to Martí's efforts to organize the 1895 war of independence. Gonzalo de Quesada (1868-1915) was an attorney and writer, often referred to as Martí's "favorite disciple" and married to the only child of Dr. Ramón L. Miranda and Luciana Govín. After Cuban independence, Quesada was appointed ambassador to the United States and later to Germany, where he died.

24. Máximo Gómez (1836-1905), who was born in the Dominican Republic, joined the Cuban revolutionary movement against Spain at the outset of the Ten Years' War (1868-78) and was appointed head of the revolutionary army in 1875. He again led the revolutionary army during the 1895 war of independence and had achieved the rank of supreme commander (generalísimo) by its end in 1898. Antonio Maceo (1845-96), a popular hero from a poor family and known as the "Bronze Titan," was a respected military leader during the Ten Years' War, by the end of which he had been made general. He refused to surrender to the Spanish even after general acceptance by the Cubans of a truce in 1878, participated in the subsequent conspiracies against Spain, and died in battle during the final independence war.

25. José Maceo, a brother of Antonio Maceo (see n. 24), was likewise an indefatigable combatant against Spanish rule in Cuba and died in battle on July 5, 1896. Guillermo Moncada (1838-95) was a carpenter who joined the Cuban revolutionary forces during the Ten Years' War for independence and reached the rank of brigadier. He fought again in the so-called Little War (Guerra Chiquita) of 1880 and died before engaging in any of the battles of the 1895 war, having risen to the rank of general. Flor Crombet was a veteran of Cuba's earlier rebellions against Spain. He was killed shortly after disembarking in Cuba to join the final war of independence, on April 10, 1895, as leader of the expedition that included Antonio and José Maceo.

26. The Spanish-Cuban-American- War, II, xxvii.

27. Ibid., xxviii.

28. Gerardo Castellanos, Motivos de Cayo Hueso (Havana: Ucar, García, 1935); Rafael Alpízar Poyo, Cayo Hueso y José Dolores Poyo (Havana: P. Fernández, 1947); Manuel Deulofeu, Héroes del destierro (Tampa: n.p., 1900); Manuel Patricio Delgado, "Martí en Cayo Hueso," Revista Cubana 29 (Havana, July 1951-December 1952); José Rivero Muñiz, "Los cubanos en Tampa," Revista Bimestre Cubana 74 (Havana, 1958).

29. Patria was a periodical founded by Martí in New York in 1892 as the organ of the Cuban Revolutionary Party. It ceased publication at the end of the last independence war, in 1898.

30. Obras Completas, 111, 57-58.

31. A few examples will suffice: Foner errs in identifying the date of the Cuban national holiday as October 19, instead of October 10; he describes Martí as a student of the Colegio de San Pablo, in Havana, when that school had not yet been founded; he asserts that Martí, after having served several months of hard labor, was "transferred temporarily to a prison on the Isle of Pines," south of Cuba, where there was no prison; and he calls the eight medical students unjustly executed by the Spanish authorities in Cuba in 1871, the subject of a poem by Martí, "student demonstrators shot on the streets of Havana." Foner also mistakenly refers to Rosario de la Peña, a prominent woman in Mexican literary circles, as "Rosario de la Acuña," confusing her real name with the one by which she was called, "Rosario la de Acuña," after the Mexican poet Manuel Acuña was enamored of her and committed suicide. He further errs in stating that, while in Mexico, Martí "gained a reputation as a member of the literary salon of 'Rosario de la Acuña,' which spread throughout much of Latin America, and together with his writings, made him a figure of importance on the continent." Had Foner done some basic investigation he would have learned that the activities of the salon were ignored outside Mexico and that Martí's writings were virtually unknown in the other countries of Latin America until much later. Moreover, he would not have mistakenly presumed that Martí went to Cuba in 1877 with the hope that "his presence might revive the fighting spirit of his countrymen," for he would have learned that the purpose of the trip was to arrange for the return of Martí's family to Havana and to obtain recommendations for his own impending trip to Guatemala, and that at the time no one could have hoped to revive the Cuban fighting spirit, least of all Martí, a poor exile of twenty-four completely unknown to those involved in the war effort.

32. Inside the Monster , p. 82.

33. Ibid., p. 89.

34. Ibid., p. 333.

35. Obras Completas, VIII, 36.

36. Ibid., IV, 160.

37. The America of José Martí ed. and trans. Juan de Onís (New York: Noonday, 1953).

38. Martí on the U.S.A., ed. and trans. Luis A. Baralt (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966).

39. "Preface," Inside the Monster , pp. 9-10.

40. Federico Henríquez y Carvajal (1848-1952) was a Dominican writer, friend of Martí (whom he called "the Apostle"), and sympathizer of Cuban independence. He was rector of the University of Santo Domingo from 1930 to 1933.

41. In this sense Inside the Monster is clearly distinguishable from the previous anthologies in English but similar to the one of Russian translations published in Moscow in 1956, José Martí ed. V. E. Ermolayev and E. M. Kolchina, trans. V. Stolbov, O. Savich, et al. The Russian anthology and Foner's coincide in omitting such classics among Martí's chronicles about the United States as "Peter Cooper," "The Inauguration of a President," "The Celebration of the Constitution in Philadelphia," "President Garfield," "Longfellow," etc., while including "Jesse James, Great Bandit," "The Secretary of the Navy, Whitney" (the title of which the Russians respect-"Morkoy Minstr. Uitnei"-but Foner changes to "Political Corruption"), "The Truth about the United States, The United States View of Mexico," and "The Washington Pan-American Congress."

42. Obras Completas, XI, 235.

43. "Monumento de los peregrinos," Ibid., XII, 287.

44. Benito Juárez (1806-72) was a liberal statesman of Indian extraction who was twice president of Mexico and leader of the country's rebellion against French occupation, at the end of which, in 1867, he began his second presidency.

45. Ibid., X, 308, 309.

46. Héctor Hernández Pardo, "Interview with U.S. Professor Philip S. Foner," Granma (Havana, January 23, 1977): 6.