José Martí Reader. Jose Marti
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a dissenting vote, then, in the shade of the Adirondacks, which beckon greatness, the convention recommended those practical reforms of simple justice that can change a grievous crowd of oppressed and restless men and women into a useful and picturesque element of American civilization.
Since they have already been robbed of their rights as freed peoples, for reasons of state, let us not rob the Indians of their rights as men. Since the despoiling of their lands, even when rational and necessary, continues to be a violent act resented by every civilized nation with hatred and with secular wars, it must not be aggravated by further repression and inhuman trading. The unfair and corrupting reservation system must be quickly abolished, and we must gradually make national lands available to the Indians, fusing them with the white population so they may promptly own state lands, enjoying the rights and sharing the responsibilities of the rest of the citizenry. The payment of yearly stipends must be abolished, for this encourages begging and vagrancy, and accustoms the Indians to neglect making use of their own resources. We must train the Indians in accord with their needs and potentialities, and they must be convinced — and when necessary compelled — to learn and to work, even if because of the present life of laziness in learning they may resist. The Indians will have to return to their unblemished souls and rise to citizenship.
To thus convert them into useful men and women, and change the regions which today are no more than extremely costly prisons into a peaceful and prosperous country, says the convention, the entire stupid, present-day teaching system will have to be changed. We must substitute the working of common lands, which neither stimulates nor permits the worker to see any profit, for the distributing of land into plots of ground for every family, inalienable for 25 years, in relation to the kind of terrain and the size of each house. The government should pay a good price for the lands not apportioned, and since these monies are to go right back into its own pocket, because the government is the guardian of the Indians who sell them, the government should retain the funds received from these lands for the industrial education and betterment of the Indians, and open the purchased lands to colonization. Let the tribes themselves revoke those treaties responsible for their wretched condition. Admit to citizenship all tribes which accept individual distribution of their lands, and all Indians who abandon the tribes that refuse to accept them, to comply with the uses of civilization. Stop taking the Indians away from the land of their forefathers and herding them into crowded centers under the self-seeking vigilance of offensive and avaricious government employees. “Spread schools,” said the Deputy Inspector of Indian Schools at last, but they must be useful and living schools, for every effort to disseminate instruction is futile if it does not apply to the needs, nature and future of the one receiving it. Engage no halfhearted teachers who know nothing of what they teach, and are appointed only to augment the family pittance of some employee, or to please the political bigwigs. Competent teachers will be hired and will compel the Indians to envy their children for the schooling they receive, even if the parents have to curtail their household rations for as long as the ominous rationing system persists. No textbook education, which is merely a storehouse of words weighing heavily upon the head to then tell the hands how to work well. Indians should be taught the nature of the fields they are to cultivate, and the nature of their true selves and the village in which they live; in this way they will understand and admire. Teach them something about practical politics so they may reach a suitable state of mutual respect.
Let them know how the country is run, and what are their human rights to possess it and think about it, and how they may exercise those rights. The school should instruct them in making their life a satisfying one: a country school for country people.
No details or fancy theories; only how to raise animals and plant fields, all the tasks that make them useful and self-possessed members of a community of workers. We should not send the Indians or country people teachers of literature alone. Living literature is the teacher. Let us send them teachers of crafts and agriculture.
That convention held by the friends of the Indians went well and ended well, there by the quiet waters of Lake Mohonk where the mountains are close at hand and where the beautiful square fields, cultivated with scrupulous care, look like colossal green flowers opening to the eyes of men worthy of contemplating them.
New York, October 25, 1885
Dedication of the Statue of Liberty
In this article, published in the daily La Nación, Buenos Aires, January 1, 1887, Martí narrates in great detail the celebrations held on October 28, 1886, in New York, for the inauguration of the famous statue donated to the United States by the French people in recognition of the support given during the American War of Independence.
For him who enjoys thee not, Liberty, it is difficult to speak of thee. His anger is as great as that of a wild beast forced to bend his knees before his tamer. He knows the depths of hell while glancing up toward the man who lives arrogantly in the sun. He bites the air as a hyena bites the bars of his cage. Spirit writhes within his body as though it were poisoned.
The wretched man who lives without liberty feels that only a garment made of mud from the streets would benefit him. Those who have thee, oh Liberty! know thee not. Those who have thee not should not speak of thee but conquer thee.
But rise, oh insect, for the city swarms with eagles! Walk or at least crawl: look around, even if your eyes fill with shame. Like a smitten lackey, squirm among the hosts of brilliant lords. Walk, though you feel the flesh stripped off your body! Ah! If they only knew how you wept, they would pick you up, and you too, dying, would know how to lift your arms toward eternity!
Arise, oh insect, for the city is like an ode! Souls ring out like well-tuned instruments. If it is dark and there is no sun in the sky, it is because all light is in the souls; it flowers within men’s breasts.
Liberty, it is thine hour of arrival! The whole world, pulling the victorious chariot, has brought thee to these shores. Here thou art like the poet’s dream, as great as space, spanning heaven and earth!
That noise we hear — it is triumph resting.
That darkness we see — it is not the rainy day, nor gloomy October; it is the dust, tinted by death, thy chariot has raised up in its wake.
I can see them with drawn swords, holding their heads in their hands, their limbs a formless pile of bones, their bodies girded with flames, the stream of life oozing out of their broken foreheads like wings. Tunics, armor, scrolls of parchment, shields, books gather resplendently at thy feet, and thou commandest at last over the cities of interests and the phalanxes of war, oh aroma of the world! Oh goddess, daughter of man!
Man grows. Behold how he has outgrown churches and chosen the sky as the only temple worthy of sheltering his deity! But thou, oh marvelous one! growest with man; and armies, the whole city, the emblazoned ships about to exalt thee approach thy mist-veiled feet, like variegated shells dashed on the rocks by the somber sea when the fiend of tempest, wrapped in lightning, rides across the sky on a black cloud.
Thou hast done well, Liberty, in revealing thyself to the world on a dark day, for thou canst not yet be satisfied with thyself! Now you, my feast less heart, sing of the feast!
It was yesterday, October 28, that the United States solemnly accepted the Statue of Liberty which the people of France have donated to them in memory of July 4, 1776, when they declared their independence from England, won with the help of French blood. It was a raw day: the air was ashy, the streets muddy, the rain relentless; but seldom was man’s rejoicing so great.
One felt a peaceful joy as though a balm soothed one’s soul. From brows to which light is not lacking, light seemed to shine more brightly, and that fair instinct of human decency which illumines the dullest faces emerged even from opaque spirits, like a wave’s surge.
The emotion was immense. The movement resembled a mountain chain. Not an empty spot remained on the streets. The two rivers seemed like solid land. The steamers, pearly in the fog, maneuvered crowded from wheel to wheel. Brooklyn Bridge groaned under its load of people. New York and its suburbs, as though invited to a wedding, had risen early. Among the happy crowds that filled the streets there were none as beautiful — not the workmen