Cuban revolutionaries found their voice in José Martí & Castro heard it echoing through the ages

Cuba

FOLLOWING CASTRO'S REVOLUTION, displaced Cubans invaded Miami. Following the Ten Years War, they invaded New York City. These Cuban exiles placed little faith in the Treaty of Zanjón wherein Spain promised political reform. General Martínez Campos, appointed captain-general in 1879, was just another peninsulare villain in the eyes of the insurrectionists. Freedoms of speech, the press, and assembly existed only at his whim. The exiles harbored no illusions of ever adjusting to Spanish rule. “Cuba Libre”, free Cuba, became their battle cry.

José Martí (click to enlarge)

One man emerged as the intellectual leader of the Cuba Libre movement, José Martí. Martí established the Cuban Revolutionary Party, and he helped other exiles found more groups dedicated to the dissemination of revolutionary propaganda. 

José Martí, a fierce Cuban patriot, believed himself to be a citizen of the world. He was renowned as a teacher, journalist, poet and revolutionary who captured and ignited the spirit of the Americas with his speeches and writings. Although he focused on freeing all of Latin America from Spanish rule, he saw danger in the growing economic and political power of the United States. He declared that “Cuba must be free of the United States as well as Spain.” He referred to the nation of the Yankees as the “monster” writing, “I have lived inside the monster, and I know its entrails.”

Those who attempt to explain the fissures in US-Cuban affairs solely as a result of the Cold War are overlooking the groundwork laid by Martí long before communism and the Soviet Union. Indeed, José Martí's influence is easily recognized in much of Castro's own speeches and writings, especially in the days long before the attack he led on the army barracks at Moncada near Santiago de Cuba, long before his imprisonment and exile to Mexico, long before his return to lead a successful revolution to depose America's friend, Fulgencio Batista, and long before he ever avowed loyalty to communism or the Soviet Union.

Martí is also the author of the words to Cuba's most popular song, Guantánamera:

The early efforts of Martí and his fellow exiles were stymied by an autonomist party in Cuba. These men and women feared the death and destruction that a fresh outbreak of armed insurrection would bring. They hoped to craft a peaceful solution in which the island would gain self rule as an autonomous member of the empire. Martí worked assiduously to negate the autonomist's influence in America. Although he distrusted the American's expansionist proclivities, he knew that he needed to wield the new world power as a weapon in his fight against Spain.

Against this backdrop, the Spanish government in Cuba committed another diplomatic blunder. Once again, it involved an American steamship, this time the Aliança.

I read much of José Martí's writings long before I began writing Rebels on the Mountain, my novel set in the time of Castro's insurgency. It provided me with the philosophical backdrop of that revolution, and helped me better understand its political underpinnings.

Equestrian statue of José Martí at entrance to New York's Central Park (click to enlarge)

Interestingly, three monuments to Latin American heroes stand at the Artist's Gate to Central Park in New York City. Among them are Simon Bolivar, José de Martin, and José Martí.