José Martí Reader. Jose Marti
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eternal feeling.
God does exist, and I come in his name to break in Spanish hearts the cold and indifferent glass that contains their tears.
God does exist, and if you people make me move away from here without having torn out of you your cowardly, unfortunate indifference, let me despise you, since I am unable to hate anyone; let me pity you in the name of my God.
I will not hate you, nor will I curse you.
If I were to hate anyone, I would hate myself for so doing.
If my God were to curse, I would deny him for so doing.
IV
You who have never had a thought of justice in your heads, or a word of truth upon your lips for the most grievously sacrificed, most cruelly crushed race upon this earth.
You who have sacrificed some people upon the altar of enticing words, and have gladly listened to others, to the most elemental principles of righteousness, to the most common notions of feeling — cry out for your honor, cry out at such sacrifice, cover your heads with dust, fall to your bare knees and begin picking up the pieces of your reputation which are scattering over the ground in all directions.
What were you beginning to do so many years ago?
What have you done?
There was a time when sunlight was not hidden from your lands. And today there is scarcely a ray of it shining upon them from here, as if the sun itself were ashamed of giving light to your possessions.
Mexico, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, New Granada, the Antilles all came in festive attire, kissed your feet, and carpeted with gold the wide wake left by your ships upon the Atlantic. You crushed the freedom of all those countries; they all joined hands in placing one more sphere, one more world in your kingly crown.
Spain was reminiscent of Rome.
Caesar had returned to the world and had divided himself into pieces, each piece lodging in one of your men with their thirst for glory and their delirious ambition.
Centuries passed.
The subjugated nations had laid a golden highway across the North Atlantic for your ships. And across the South Atlantic our captains laid a path of clotted blood in whose swampy pools floated heads black as ebony; and threatening arms rose up like thunder paving the way for a storm.
And finally the storm broke; and just as it was slowly prepared, so it was furiously and inexorably unleashed upon us.
Venezuela, Bolivia, New Granada, Mexico, Peru and Chile bit your hands that were convulsively holding fast the reins of their freedom, opening deep wounds in them. And since your courage was flagging and weary and buffeted about, an ay! escaped from your lips, blow after blow resounded dismally in the bloody sea path, and the head of Spanish domination rolled over the American continent, traversing its plains, tramping its mountains, crossing its rivers, and falling at last to the bottom of a deep canyon, never again to rise from it.
The Antilles, the Antilles alone, especially Cuba, groveled at your feet, put her lips to your wounds, licked your hands, and carefully and affectionately made a new head for your mistreated shoulders.
And while she carefully restored your strength, you folded your arms beneath her arms, reached into her heart, tore it out, and ruptured its arteries of learning and morality.
And when she demanded of you a niggardly pittance in recompense for the hardships she had suffered, you held out your hands and showed her the shapeless mass of her shattered heart, and laughingly threw it in her face.
She felt her chest, found another new heart beating vigorously, and blushing with shame she stilled its beating, bowed her head, and waited.
But this time she waited on guard, and the treacherous claw was able to draw blood only from the iron wrist of the hand that covered her heart.
And when she again held out her hands pleading for more help, you once again showed her the mass of flesh and blood, once again laughed, and once again threw it in her face. And she felt the blood rise to her throat, choke her, and mount to her brain. It needed to flow, for it was com pressed in her vigorous heart, and boiling throughout her body in the heat of mockery and outrage. At last it did flow. It did because you yourselves drove it to do so, because your cruelty caused her veins to burst, because you have so many times broken her heart to pieces and she did not want you to break it again.
And if this was your desire, why are you surprised?
And if you think it is a question of honor to continue writing your colonial history with such pages, why do you not even sweeten with some justice your supreme effort to establish the shreds of your conqueror’s cloak in Cuba forever?
And if you know and recognize this, because you cannot help knowing and recognizing it; if you understand this, then why in your comprehension do you not even begin to practice those unavoidable precepts of honor whose avoidance makes you suffer so much?
When all is forgotten, when all is lost, when in the turbulent sea of human misery the God of Ages sometimes stirs the waves and finds a nation’s disgrace, he never finds compassion or feelings in them.
Honor can be stained. Justice can be sold.
Everything can be torn apart.
But the notion of righteousness floats over all and never sinks.
Preserve that notion in your land if in the history of this world you do not want the first ones to sink to be yourselves.
Preserve it, for that land can yet be a nation in which, even where all feelings have vanished, there might finally remain the feelings of sorrow and of its own dignity.
XII
And so many have died!
And so many sons are going to the quarries in the dark of night to weep upon the stone under which they assume rests the spirit of their forefathers!
And so many mothers have lost their reason!
Mother, mother! How I feel you living in my soul! How your memory inspires me! How the bitterest tears of your memory burn my cheeks!
Mother, mother! So many are weeping as you have wept! So many mothers are losing the sparkle in their eyes as you have lost it!
Mother, mother!
In the meantime, the nation’s deputies are applauding.
Look, look.
There before me parade in a heartrending and silent procession the specters that resemble living men, and the living men that resemble specters.
Look, look!
Here goes happy, satisfied, joyful cholera laughing with horrible laughter. It has exchanged its scythe for the prison whip. It carries a bundle of chains upon its back. From time to time a drop of blood falls from that shapeless group of men that raises an infernal noise. Always blood! This time the cholera is loading its back in the political prison of Cuba.
Look, look!
Here comes a head embellished with snow. It bends upon a neck that groans because it cannot support it. Purulent matter runs down its wretched clothing. A heavy chain clanks with a dull thud at its feet. And yet it smiles. Always that smile! The martyr is truly something of God. And how hapless the people when they murder God!
Look, look!
Here comes loathsome, filthy smallpox, a scarlet tear out of hell that laughs with frightful laughter. It has one eye like Quasimodo. It carries a living body on its hideous humped back. It throws the body upon the ground, leaps around it, tramples upon it, tosses it into the air, picks it up and replaces it upon its back, throws it down again, dances around it and cries: “Lino, Lino!” And the body moves, and it fastens shackles to the body and pushes it a long way, a very long way, down, far down to the mound over there known as the quarry. “Lino! Lino!” it repeats as it moves away. And the body rises to its feet, and the lash