José Martí Reader. Jose Marti
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is true that his spirit is God himself. How far astray do people go when they apply the lash to God!
Look, look!
Here it comes, laughing — a wide Negro mouth laughing. The world depends upon it. Memory folded the wings in its brain and flew farther. The curly wool is already white. It laughs and laughs.
“Master, why am I living?”
“Master, master, how ugly it sounds!” And he shakes the leg irons and laughs and laughs.
God is weeping.
And how the people weep when they make God weep!
Look, look!
Here comes the quarry. It is an immense mass. Many arms covered with gold braid are pushing it. And it rolls, rolls along, and at every revolution a mother’s despairing eyes shine forth within a black disc and disappear. And the men with the arms keep laughing and pushing, and the mass keeps rolling, and at every revolution a body is crushed and the chains clang together and a tear wells out of the stone and alights upon the neck of one of the laughing, pushing men. And the eyes shine and the bones break and the tears weigh heavily upon the necks, and the mass rolls along. Ay! When the mass finishes rolling, such a gross body will weigh upon your heads that you never will be able to lift them again. Never!
In the name of compassion, in the name of honor, in the name of God, stop that mass; stop it, lest it turn toward you men and drag you down with its horrible weight. Stop it, for it is scattering many tears upon the earth, and the tears of the martyrs are ascending to the sky in the mists, and then condensing; and if you fail to stop it, the sky will tumble down upon you.
The terrible cholera, the snowy head, the frightful smallpox, the wide Negro mouth, the mass of stone. And everything — like the corpse looming out of the coffin, like the white face looming out of the black robe — everything passes by enveloped in a heavy, spreading, reddish, suffocating atmosphere. Blood, always blood!
Oh, look, look!
Spain cannot be free.
Spain still has too much blood upon her head.
Now approve the Spanish government’s conduct in Cuba.
Now, fathers of the country, declare in the country’s name that you sanction the most iniquitous violation of morality, and the most complete obliviousness to every sentiment of justice.
Declare it, sanction it, approve it — if you can.
The Spanish Republic and the Cuban Revolution
When the first Spanish Republic was proclaimed in February 1873, Martí published this booklet in Madrid. Sent to Don Estanislao Figueras, head of the new republican government, Martí sought to shift Spanish republican opinion in favor of Cuba.
Glory and triumph are no more than incentives to the fulfillment of duty. In the practical life of ideas, power is simply respect for all the manifestations of justice, firm determination in the face of the prompting of cruelty or pride. When respect for justice disappears and there is no fulfillment of duty, triumph and glory are enveloped in infamy, and power has a senseless, hateful existence.
As a man of good will, I salute the triumphant Republic — salute it now, as I will curse it in the future if it strangles another Republic, if a free people constricts the freedoms of another people, if a nation that says it is a nation subjugates another nation which is asserting itself, too. If the freedom of the tyranny is tremendous, the tyranny of freedom is repugnant to it and shocks and frightens it.
Freedom cannot be fruitful for peoples whose foreheads are stained with blood. The Spanish Republic is opening the way to an era of happiness for its homeland; it should take care to cleanse its forehead of all the stains that becloud it, so it will not go calmly and confidently along paths that lead to remorse and oppression, along paths that involve even the merest violation or hinder understanding of the people’s will.
No will that represses the will of another should be respected. The Spanish Republic is built on universal suffrage, on conscientious and informed suffrage, on the spirit that gives life to the most sacred body of law, on the words that beget freedoms. How can it impose its will on one who expresses its own will by means of suffrage? How can it reject the unanimous will of a people, when it itself is built on the free, unanimous will of the people?
I neither prejudge acts of the Spanish Republic nor think that the Republic should be timid or cowardly. But I do warn it that actions are always prone to injustice. I remind it that injustice is a death knell to the respect of others; I warn it that being unjust means being wicked; and I implore it never to betray the universal conscience of honor — which does not rule out patriotic honor but which demands that patriotic honor exist within universal honor.
Basing themselves on republican ideas, the Cuban people considered that their honor was threatened by the government that denied them this right. And, since they had no honor and felt a strong need for it, they sought it in sacrifice and martyrdom — where Spanish republicans have been wont to find it. I look angrily away from the niggardly and suicidal republicans who deny the right of insurrection to that ill-treated, oppressed, impoverished, sold-out people whose hands are tied — because the Spanish Republic has sanctioned so many insurrections of its own. Cuba had been sold out to further the ambitions of its rulers, sold out to be exploited by its tyrants. The proclaimed Republic has said so many times. The triumphant Republic has often accused them of being tyrants. That Republic hears and will defend me.
For Cuba, the struggle has meant the death of its most beloved sons, the loss of its prosperity, which it cursed as dishonorable because it was based on slavery; the government permitted it to grow wealthy in exchange for infamy, and Cuba preferred poverty to that evil concession of the government. What profound grief for those who denounce the sudden acknowledgment of slaves’ honor and Cuba’s energetic determination!
It asked, begged, groaned and hoped. How can one who replied to its entreaties with sneers and fresh ridicule of its hopes have the right to denounce it?
Let the pride of those whose honor is besmirched speak out opportunely; those who do not understand that there is honor only in the satisfaction of justice are sad indeed. Let the merchant defend the source of wealth that is escaping from him. Some say that the separation of the Antilles is not in Spain’s interests, but love of material possessions upsets the spirit; unreasonableness abides in men’s brains; and excessive pride condemns what you can achieve, seek and acquire. I cannot understand that there should be a mire where a heart should be.
The wealthy Cubans blessed their misery, the battlefield was nourished by the blood of martyrs; and Spain knows that those who live have not been frightened by the dead, that the insurrection was the con sequence of a revolution, that freedom had found another home land, that it would have been Spanish if Spain had so wished, but that it was free in spite of Spain’s will.
The insurgents do not yield. Just as Spain burned Sagunto, Cuba burned Bayamo; the struggle that Cuba wanted to make more human continues dreadful through Spain’s will, for it refused to make it more human. For four years — without respite, without any sign of ceding in their effort — the insurgents have been requesting their independence from oppression, their honorable freedom, and requesting it dying, just as the Spanish republicans have for their freedom so many times. How can any honorable republican dare to deny a people a right which he has claimed for himself?
My homeland is writing its irrevocable resolution with blood. On the dead bodies of its sons, it is rising up to say that it firmly wants its independence. They are fighting and dying. Both the sons of Spain and the sons of my homeland are dying. Does it not shock the Spanish Republic to learn that Spaniards are dying in combat against other republicans?
Cuba wanted Spain to respect its will, which is the will of honored spirits; it should respect Cuba’s will, for my homeland wants the same thing Spain wants, but wants it alone, because it has been alone in asking for it, because, alone, it has lost its much-loved sons, because nobody else has had the courage to defend it, because it understands how far its vitality reaches, because it knows