For reactions to & reviews of "Charla, A Chat With Jose Marti", visit my press page .

An Early Florida Adventure Story: The Fray Andres de San Miguel Account

Another of the European castaway accounts that became a new literary genre in the 16 century. Reading a few of these now, I realize that by the time Defoe writes Robinson Crusoe, the genre is so well-known, well-read, accessible and acknowledged as a legitimate genre, it begins to become used as extended allegory--secular versions of Pilgrim's Progress, where the protagonist depends upon his own resources (reason, initiative, will) to save himself, not by the Deity. By the 18 century, marooned European sailors become hackneyed literary devices for use in both metaphorical/philosophical, humanist works as well as adventure stories.

With his account, Fray Andres de San Miguel comes across as an intelligent and compassionate young man --though written later in his life while he was living in Mexico City as a Carmeline friar. A ship-wrecked Andres de San Miquel promised the Almighty to devote his life to God should He deliver him from the wilds of La Florida. So is this a religious' look back to his younger days,to the seminal chapter in his life that led him to find God? Not solely, no. There is intriguing anthropological information on aboriginal Florida, a long-lost people, with nothing left to us of their lives but for these accounts (also see Hernando D'Escalante Fontaneda's account , 1575).

As a side note of interest, I should mention that Fray Andres was a skilled engineer that helped fix the botched, first attempts to dredge out the lagoons around Mexico City. By the 17 Century, Mexico City city becomes the most populated city in the Americas--a cultural and political hub of inestimable value.

Dispelling Myths in re-telling "La Conquista"

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall


Above all, what one may profit from reading this book would have to be a clearer understanding of the surreptitiously and higgedly-piggedly way in which the conquest was achieved. The Monarchs of the new country called "Las Españas" were not bank rolling the efforts but granting individuals who headed, remarkably similar to corporations, groups of kinsman, bondsmen, and slaves into the newly discovered lands for profit. The Church was both an ally and a justification to spread their culture, by force if necessary, and acquire lands for Spain and the "saving of souls" languishing in ignorance and neglect. Sanctified conquest, "the truth" being administered by the entrepreneurial spirit. Sound familiar?

Eye-opening were the freedmen, erstwhile slaves, who actively participated in the land-grab. Informing was the fact that the majority of "the conquest" was nothing other than an allied effort MANNED by warring tribes fighting to rid themselves of Empires like the "Aztec Mexica" and "The Inca" in order to become subjects of an empire that was, at least, farther away. Hundreds of thousands of natives allied themselves to hundreds of aliens from across the seas in epic battles that would grant them their "freedom". To what extent they were proved right and/or wrong is also discussed in Restall's book--perhaps not enough, actually. Anyone wanting to understand the actual way the conquest was achieved ("conquest" becoming a misnomer as you read along) must consult Restall--give it a read, have at it!


View all my reviews.

Martí Disembarks & Papi's Birthday

Today is my Dad's birthday. He is 77 years old, bless his soul through and through!

When I called him this morning to wish him a Happy Birthday--as I'm NYC and he's back in Miami--I asked him if he knew anything else about his birth date. He says: "uh...Simon Bolivar lost his virginity today"? Uh, no dad. He asked for a clue. "Row, row, row your boat..." I sang to him.

Ah.....well, then it must be the date that Martí and Maximo Gomez landed in Cuba to start the last and succesful revolutionary war against Spain!"

Yes!!!

On this date in 1895 José Martí and Máximo Gomez, along with Brigidiers Francisco Borrero y Ángel Guerra, Marcos del Rosario (later Colonel Rosario) and César Salas' (later made a Captain) disembarked from a german boat skippered by Henrich J.T. Lowe. In a terrible tropical squall, the men were lowered into a dingy 3 miles off the coast of Cajobabo beach in Oriente Province (eastern-most province of Cuba). They rowed and baled for 3 miles in an open boat guided by the mountains they could barely make out ahead of them. Gomez's diary describes Marti's reaction upon first making out the mountains of Cuba and later the shore, pelted by the rain in huge goblets, under a dark squall, becoming more and more discernible with every oar's stroke:

"Marti, stunned, could only say: 'Cuba.' "

From Marti's Diary we read:

11 Abril. - ... Capitán conmovido. Bajan el bote. Llueve grueso al arrancar. Rumbamos mal. Ideas diversas y revueltas en el bote. Más chubasco. El timón se pierde. Fijamos rumbo. Llevo el remo de proa. Salas rema seguido. Paquito Borrero y el General ayudan de popa. Nos ceñimos los revólvers. Rumbo al abra. La luna asoma, roja, bajo una nube. Arribamos a una playa de piedras, La Playita, (al pié de Cajobabo.) Me quedo en el bote el último vaciándolo. Salto. Dicha grande. Viramos el bote, y el garrafón de agua. Bebemos Málaga. Arriba por piedras, espinas y cenegal. Oímos ruido, y preparamos, cerca de una talanquera. Ladeando un sitio, llegamos a una casa. Dormimos cerca, por el suelo.

11 April.-...the Captain emotional. The boat is lowered. Raining hard from the start. We make bad progress. Diverse and mixed impressions in the boat. More squall. We lose the tiller. We set a course. I take the oar at the prow. Salas oars behind me. Paquito Borrero and the General helps at the bow. We fix our revolvers. Inlet ahead. The moon peeks at us from behind a cloud, red. We raise a small, pebbled beach, La Playita, (at the foot of Cajobabo). I stay behind uloading the boat. Jump! What joy! We turn the boat over and empty the water bottle. We drink Málaga brandy over pebbles, thorns and mud. We hear sounds and we're at the ready by a sea wall. Bypassing apace, we near a house. We sleep nearby on the ground. (My Translation)



Gone is the oratorical prose, the ornate sentences, complex and floral. No more aphorism. This becomes a War Diary, like Caesar's Gallic Wars. Lezama Lima will call Marti's diary from 11 April - 19 May, 1895, the greatest poem ever written by any Cuban. The only English translation can be found in Esther Allen's wonderful, Penguin Edition, Selected Writings of José Martí .

Happy Birthday Papi, thank you for teaching me to be a good Cuban!

Eres mi Rey.

“Who is thinking of Lincoln’s Birthday, which was yesterday?” / Quien pienzara de Lincoln, en su anniversario, que fue ayer?” --Martí, Dia de Inauguración




In 1809, two-hundred years ago today, Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February. Today, he's all over TV, YouTube, the internet, with events planned in Springfield and D.C.-- people pausing all over the country today, not a majority but enough of us --especially as the Great Emancipator’s fruits are plainly visible to even the most callous, the most recalcitrant and hateful of our countrymen and women.

If you come across this entry, today especially, please ask yourself: would he be pleased with his country, with what we've become? Are we “post-racial” as is commented lately? Have we become the meritocracy Lincoln thought he was ensuring in 1865? (Is there anywhere on earth that can happen?)

Do we have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people?” We must ask ourselves, “who” are the people?" Is “the people” a certain economic class, a particular ethnicity? Do they speak "English Only?" The People: must they believe in G-d as a prerequisite, or can they strive to separate any mention of a deity from political discourse? Can an openly atheist politician survive any election in our country; can a Muslim? On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a joint resolution declaring “In God We Trust” the national motto of the United States. Are you only one of the people if you believe this to be a “Christian” or a “God-conscious” state?

Are we a democracy or are we an empire? Do we believe in a Jeffersonian State, where the pursuit of happiness is to be unencumbered by the state or any aristocratic class, keeping a close watch on our civil liberty, the people (that word again) giving by their assent in an orderly rule of law? How many of us want the United States to become a Napoleonic State: exporting our “ideals” as a cover for economic (and military) domination of far-away continents? Is this an Augustan State, unapologetically maintaining “Pax Americana” over the face of the world – calling any group that dissents “the bad guys”? We hunt the “bad guys” with glee and bathe our heroes in their blood. Are we sure we're right; do we have the answer for Humanity?

Lincoln believed America had a special place in world history, an unprecedented place: a vibrantly ambitious democracy on a continent for the taking (unless you're indigent), there is no question about that. With a strong sense of righteousness, Lincoln felt burdened with saving the Union for generations to come, we all concur--but to what purpose?

So, if remembering Lincoln today you come across this entry—today especially—please ask yourself: “to what purpose”?

Martí and Darwin / Martí y Darwin

**A Mountain’s Promontory

Marti was in Havana after the Pact of Zanjón, amnesty being given to all political exiles by the Spanish in Cuba.. At that time, Marti was working for Miguel Viondi’s law firm. Another employee of the law firm, a good but simple chap and not very cultured, remarked that a certain José Antonio Cortína was to speak of Charles Darwin that night at the Lyceum in Guanabacóa (a township outside of Havana). He mockingly referred to Darwin as “an Englishman who suggests that he came from a monkey!”

An explosion of laughter followed with only Martí silently dissenting; only later did he exclaim indignantly, angrily:

“That man, Charles Darwin, whom you speak of, has a forehead like a mountain’s promontory.”

He continued lecturing the office —keeping the same angry tone—attempting to explain Darwin’s work, until he realized the futility of relating the same to that boisterous and unintelligent group.

Remembering the BRONZE TITAN, General Antonio Macéo y Grajáles

“Quien intente apoderarse de Cuba, recogerá el polvo de su suelo anegado en sangre, sino perece en la lucha.”
--Antonio Macéo

“Perhaps the last legitimate war will be the one against hate.”
--José Martí


Antonio Macéo y Grajales was killed one hundred and twelve years ago. We will never fully appreciate this man, his five brothers José, Miguel, Julio, Marcos and Dominga de la Cazada (his only surviving brother at the end of the war), and their mother Mariana Grajales y Macéo until Cuba is delivered from its incipient racism. Any cursory, “Googled” search of this brilliant man will be compromised with “but” or “if only”—I mean that the greatness of this man seems always tertiary and never fully celebrated. On top of this, Cubans themselves only seem to emphasize his grit and almost super-human faith and force of arms in the struggle against colonialism. Never is there a fully-rendered appreciation of his letter-writing, stratagem, or his intellectuality.

It doesn’t help that Martí himself referred to Macéo, repeatedly, as his “right arm.” A subservient appendage? Not really, no, Martí was speaking as the First Delegate of the Cuban Revolution Party—an umbrella organization representing all political persuasions of the Cubans around the world, especially noted for its egalitarian methods and philosophy. Article 4 of the PRC’s Nine Bases read as follows:

El Partido Revolucionario Cubano no se propone perpetuar en la República Cubana, con formas nuevas o con alteraciones más aparentes que esenciales, el espíritu autoritario y la composición burocrática de la colonia, sino fundar en el ejercicio franco y cordial de las capacidades legitimas del hombre, un pueblo nuevo y de sincera democracia, capaz de vencer, por el orden del trabajo real y el equilibrio de las fuerzas sociales, los peligros de la libertad repentina en una sociedad compuesta para la esclavitud.

In other words, the PRC promised to found a society where the true measure of a man and woman (I generously mention the other sex; here, its language is undoubtedly patriarchal) would depend upon relations completely new and unprecedented in Cuba: eradication of races, per say, “Man” as the only race and dependent upon his qualities to prosper in a democratic arena.

Well, this did not happen—not by half. By 1912 disillusioned veterans—99% of them Afro Cubans--rose up against the corrupt administration of President Jose Miguel Gomez (propped up by a second American Intervention of 1906-09). Upwards of three-thousand Afro-Cubans were hunted down, and in one embarrassing event the only legitimate son of José Martí—Jose Francisco Martí, the subject of the former’s delectable “Ismaelillo”—headed a search and destroy mission against men who were promised the civil rights that they themselves had won against Spain.

I suggest that the little-discussed taboo, to this day, of palpable racism in a country that always saw its society as “post racial”—to quote the ridiculous, if well-meaning contemporary claim in American Society today—has caused immeasurable harm to the Cuban psyche. Harm beyond reckoning. We live with it today. Afro-Cuban historians feel the need to stretch exegetic proof of Martí’s patriarchy in his writings. Ibero-Cubans feel the need to tout the republic as a color-blind society!

In my own family, I am sad to confess though not surprised at all, I recall having heard my grand aunt, who was 7 years old the day Macéo was felled by the Spanish, describe a ball she attended celebrating the death of Antonio Macéo y Grajales—“that uppity mulatto with an eye for white women.” Her words.

We need concise and expansive biographies of this inimitably courageous man, one whom I would like to emulate in my life but for the fact that there is so little material at hand. Here is a complex intellect that never got a chance to flesh out his philosophical talents (which his letters more than suggest), or literature, commerce, or any other peaceful pursuit. Here is a man who subscribed to the idea of creating a republic of love, where racial diversity are celebrated metaphors of a universal humanity. I am African as much as I am Iberian.

¡General Antonio Macéo y Grajales, aqui estoy a sus ordenes!