by Sean Joseph<\/i><\/b> Our Americas: Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed and the International Fight Against Imperialism by Sean Joseph January 28, 2021 was the 168th anniversary of the birth of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed. For those unfamiliar, Mart\u00ed occupies a nearly sacrosanct position within the national mythology and memory of Cubans. Often called \u201cel ap\u00f3stol\u201d (the apostle) and \u201cel maestro\u201d (the teacher) he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882119,"featured_media":10795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27806,27827],"tags":[29886,27902,30295,30364,30365,30366],"class_list":["post-10768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internacionalinternational","category-theory-history","tag-anti-imperialism","tag-cuba","tag-history","tag-jose-marti","tag-literature","tag-nuestra-america"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdQxqk-2NG","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13882119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJanuary 28, 2021 was the 168th anniversary of the birth of Jos\u00e9 Mart\u00ed. For those unfamiliar, Mart\u00ed occupies a nearly sacrosanct position within the national mythology and memory of Cubans. Often called \u201cel ap\u00f3stol\u201d (the apostle) and \u201cel maestro\u201d (the teacher) he is the personification of Cuban nationhood and national liberation. Born on the island of Cuba in 1853 to middle-class Spanish parents, Mart\u00ed\u2019s life was punctuated from early on by questions of justice and injustice. Early in his life he physically confronted the sight of a black man who had been lynched, later fictionalizing the event in his Versos Sencillos<\/a><\/span>, writing \u201cAnd, at the feet of the dead man, he swore to wash away that crime with his own blood.\u201d He was exiled from Cuba for revolutionary activity at the age of 17, deported to Spain where he received a university education, later marrying and spending periods in Cuba and in exile in various countries. A significant period of his exile was spent in New York City, where he served as a correspondent for the various newspapers and journals of Latin America, wrote for Cuban revolutionary newspapers, and gave speeches to raise money for revolutionaries. He also found time to be one of the founding fathers of Latin America\u2019s first home grown literary movement \u2013 modernismo.
\nMuch can be written about Mart\u00ed\u2019s life, but likely more important to his memory than his life, is his death. He died on May 19, 1895 while riding into battle against Spanish soldiers in Cuba. After over a decade of exile in New York City, Mart\u00ed had founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, bringing many of the leading figures in the independence movement together. In this role, he raised funds for the purchase of weapons, recruited volunteers for his army, and organized an invasion of the colony. The invasion went poorly and quickly died down into a low-level insurgency whose persecution by the Spanish would form part of the United States\u2019s pretext for initiating the Spanish-American War, which would finally result in \u201cindependence\u201d for Cuba. This was an independence Mart\u00ed would never see or help shape. He died a martyr of the revolution and would become central to the national mythos of Cuba, a figure whose support and legitimacy would be sought by all who hoped to lay claim to political power in Cuba. Such veneration continues to this day under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, which considers the writings and speeches of Mart\u00ed of equal importance to those of Marx and Engels.
\nThe role that Mart\u00ed plays in the lives and politics of Cubans is a subject for their consideration. Here, I wish to take this anniversary as an opportunity to consider and analyze what Mart\u00ed can tell us about our own country, about imperialism, and lastly, about internationalism.
\nAmerica vs. Am\u00e9rica<\/b>
\nWhile in exile in New York City, Mart\u00ed would pen one of his most famous works, an essay entitled \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica<\/span><\/a>\u201d (\u201cOur America\u201d) which was first published in January 1891 by La Revista Illustrada<\/i> of New York City and El Partido Liberal<\/i> of Mexico City. This essay served then \u2013 as it can now \u2013 as a warning about imperialism, a call for unity amongst Latin American nations, and a trenchant defense of indigeneity. \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica\u201d is meant as the canary in the coal mine, a warning to all of Latin America that only solidarity between \u201cbrothers\u201d can defeat the \u201cgiant in seven league boots.\u201d \u201cThe hour to muster and march in unison is upon us\u201d warns Mart\u00ed. Who must muster? Whose America is this? And who is the giant which must be defeated?
\nThe answer is the same as it ever was: our country, the imperialist par excellence, the United States of America. This giant threatens the other America, Mart\u00ed\u2019s America. The latter was being imagined and theorized through a relatively new framing at the time, Latin America. Mart\u00ed identifies the United States as the giant threatening his home and his brothers. Worse, his nation and those of his brothers were being led by \u201cmen born in Am\u00e9rica, ashamed of the mother who raised them because she wears an Indian tunic!\u201d They must expel these \u201ctermites\u201d who destroy the confidence of the nation because they have none themselves. Latin America must rid itself of that bourgeoisie which bows to the imperial giant, it must show strength in unity.
\nThis unity extends beyond mere friendship between countries. Mart\u00ed is also calling for a recognition of and respect for the various peoples who make up these nations. Let\u2019s not give Mart\u00ed any credit he doesn\u2019t deserve. He was certainly a believer in the concept of racelessness, that race isn\u2019t real even as a social construct. He was also an advocate of mestizaje or mixed-ness, an idea which was wielded both by the indigenous and those of African descent to access citizenship and by white majorities to assimilate and suppress indigenous culture and language. However, one can easily see the basis for a multicultural and multiracial united front against imperialism in \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica.\u201d One of the key differences for Mart\u00ed between Am\u00e9rica and America was the role of\u00a0 indigenous peoples. He contrasts \u201cThese sons of our Am\u00e9rica, which must save herself through her Indians and is on the rise\u201d with \u201cthese deserters, who ask to take up arms with the forces of North America, which drowns its Indians in blood and is on the wane!\u201d Am\u00e9rica can only be saved by the Indians, while America is drowning the Indians in blood.
\nThe United States of America in \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica\u201d is the violent, genocidal, imperial power, ruled \u2013 for Mart\u00ed \u2013 unnaturally by men alien to the land. Am\u00e9rica, he says, must be led by \u201cstatesmen who arise from the nation.\u201d Am\u00e9rica was hampered and shackled by the \u201cimported forms and ideas\u201d which were \u201cinherited from its perverse, despotic colonizer.\u201d To build a just and free Am\u00e9rica, students must study \u201cthe history of Am\u00e9rica from the Incas to the present\u201d even if this means not studying the classics of European education such as the Greeks. Above all, this is an exhortation to take pride in what is \u201cnatural\u201d to Am\u00e9rica, to favor it and to do away with the fetish for all things European, taking only that which is useful, but keeping that which is indigenous to Am\u00e9rica as \u201cthe trunk.\u201d
\nWhat We Can Learn<\/b>
\nMuch like \u201cAmerica\u201d at the time of Mart\u00ed, the United States continues its war against the indigenous. Mere weeks before \u201cNuestra Am\u00e9rica\u201d was published, the United States Army massacred nearly three hundred Lakota people at Wounded Knee. What would he think, to see the actions of the United States at Standing Rock<\/span><\/a>, or the current abuse of indigenous activists fighting Line 3<\/span><\/a>? He would tell us to join and support their struggle, much as he tells his brothers to free the indigenous from the shackles of colonialism which hold them back. Following the model of his internationalism, we must support the struggles of indigenous people across Am\u00e9rica like the heroic efforts of indigenous activists in Bolivia<\/span><\/a> to defeat the coup, the victorious fight against decree 883 in Ecuador<\/span><\/a>, or the fight of\u00a0 indigenous people in Brazil against the imperialist attack on the Amazon under Bolsonaro<\/a><\/span>. We must also constantly struggle against American imperialism and to stand in solidarity, always, with Am\u00e9rica against America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"