✬ 11 February at 4:00PM, Arcadia, FL at the Historic Owens School as José Martí.

✬ 19 February at 7:00PM, Tampa, FL at the Historic Cuban Club: unveiling the short film, Ybor city and the Cuban Club as José Martí.

✬ 25 February at 5:00PM, Rollins College, FL at Casa Iberia as Pedro Menéndez.

✬ 27 February at 6:00PM, St. Augustine, FL at Lightner Museum, “Noche de Gala”, as Pedro Menéndez.

Unveiling "Ybor City and the Cuban Club" February 19, 2010, 7:00 PM

José Martí in Ybor City, 1891.













Same hallowed spot in 2009, the day we shot Ybor City and the Cuban Club


Mark I. Greenberg, MLS, Ph.D. Director, Special Collections Department and Florida Studies Center, USF, will officially open Ybor City and the Cuban Club to the general public on February 19, 2010. This is an introductory film which will be part of a permanent exhibit at the Tampa Bay History Center. The film, written & directed by Joe Costa of Costa Creative, will be shown in the Cuban Club in Ybor City and will then be made available on the internet via links from the History Center web site as part of their permanent exhibit. José Marti´ is played by your's truly. Ybor City and the Cuban Club will be inaugurated on February 19, 2010, 7:00 PM, at the Cuban Club, 2010 Avenida Republica de Cuba in Ybor City, FL (National Register of Historic Places since 1972).

The Youngest Martiana I Know

A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.
-José Martí

Much love to one the youngest Martianas I know: the wonderfully talented Ally Greenberg. We love Ally: she is a soccer star, a grade-A Student, inherited the prettiest blue eyes you have ever seen. She lives in Phoenix Arizona and takes care of her Mommy & Daddy & Big Sister. Her favorite poem may be "Los Zapaticos de Rosa" by Martí.

"I had to write a report for Spanish Heritage, I chose José Martí...I got an A+ in Spanish. Love, Allison" reads her note.

No one knows what makes up the loving fibers in the tender heart of a child like Ally. Talking to her inspires me towards Love and Empathy...what Martí really meant when he called for a Republic of Love in Cuba...

Dios te guarde, Ally.

"Menéndez: Claiming La Florida for King & Cross" Opens in St. Augustine!

Timucuan artifacts, Pedro Menéndez outline city’s story

By PETER GUINTA, for St. Augustine's newspaper, The St. Augustine Record

A reflective yet self-justifying “Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles” took the stage Monday at Flagler College Auditorium and recounted details of his founding of St. Augustine in September 1565, his successful attack against Fort Caroline and his massacre of 150 shipwrecked French sailors.
Television actor Chaz Mena portrayed Menendez as passionate, noble, ambitious, callous and devout.
“I am not a conquistador,” he told the packed 800-seat auditorium. “I want to be your founding father.”

                                                                           Photo by Ed Dreher
The presentation was the second of seven in the Discover First America: Legacies of Florida series.
Just before “Menendez” spoke, Kathleen Deagan, the University of Florida’s distinguished research curator of Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, described the search for archaeological evidence found in scores of digs at the Fountain of Youth and the Mission of Nombre de Dios.
She said he arrived here in five ships of 11 he started with in Spain.

However, the location of his first fort has not been determined, she said.Two accounts contradict one another. The first says the Spanish soldiers dug a trench quickly to act as protection against the Timucuan. The second says Menendez was offered a large house in the Timucuan village of Seloy.
He arrived with 800 people — 300 soldiers, 200 sailors and several hundred “useless” people, he reported. But by November of that year, the colony was down to 200 people.

“It was a hard beginning,” Deagan said. “There was hunger and the Indians were becoming hostile.”
In 1566, Menendez moved the city to Anastasia Island for seven years, she said.“No trace of that settlement has ever been found,” she said, adding that high tides, storms, seasonal floods and soil erosion may be the reason both sites have not been located.

She did show photographs of the very few Timucuan artifacts uncovered by her digs.

In 1572, Menendez moved the city back to the mainland, to where it is today.When he first arrived, Menendez held the first Thanksgiving in the New World.

“There wasn’t turkey, but garbanzo beans, ham, olives and fish and small game,” she said. “There were very few deer.”

“We are fairly certain that the first fort was somewhere near the area of Hospital Creek,” she said.
The energetic Mena acts in movies, such as “Miami Rhapsody” with Sarah Jessica Parker, plays a judge on Law & Order and performs in off-Broadway plays.

His research and performance were so thorough that one might think Menendez had been channeled.
“There is an old Asturian saying, ‘Once you have a reputation, especially a bad one, go to sleep, you cannot change it.’” he said.

photos by Jackie Hird

He had been a merchant with his own ships when Phillip II, king of Spain, asked him to go to the New World to counter the French, who were already there, he said. He had been with his wife for only four of his 20 years of marriage, he said. He called the Gulf Stream “a river given to the Spanish people by God.”

Trying to explain his sometime cruelty, he said, “I was reared in violence and governments depend on people like me.”

 

photos by Jackie Hird

Discover First AmericaThe Discover First America series celebrates the city’s 450th commemoration, 2013-2015. All programs are free and are held in the Flagler College Auditorium beginning at 7 p.m. The series continues with the following programs:

• * Tuesday, April 13 — “Palaces in Paradise: Flagler’s Age of Opulence,” with Tom Graham, professor emeritus of history, Flagler College; John Blades, executive director of Flagler Museum; and a special “Conversation with Henry Flagler,” with Flagler played by Tom Rahner and Mayor Joe Boles as himself.
• * Tuesday, May 18 — “Road to Freedom: African-Americans in Florida,” by Derek Hankerson and James Bullock, both actors and creative directors.

At Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn, NY

Early, at about 6 AM, along with the saintly breed of men and women who armed with their well-oiled hand tools and well-worn leather tool bags, I trained to Brooklyn, NY on the holy L train. Though in costume, dressed as Marti, sans mustache, I was one of them: a craftsman getting to work.
I was going to bring Jose Marti to the young men and women of the Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn, NY--not two miles from where Marti lived with the Mantillas in the 1880's.
They are beautiful children; children I call them but all were seniors who would soon graduate. I was very moved by their questions, though felt bad for them as most were sleepy: we started at 8:30AM!
Their reading list is impressive, their understanding of Latin-America is palpable, and their place in its history discussed openly. The Latin-American Studies at AUC maintain a blog, see for yourself!

I consider the work done at AUP absolutely vital. Thanks to Professor(s) Jorge Sandoval and Diana Isern for their help this morning: they are true heroes, another example of Latinos dedicated to the development (and well-being) of the students entrusted to them. I was struck by their love and dedication at every interaction with their kids--the joy with which these teachers sanctify their good work!













 A good worker is a saint, to work well is holy; what a privilege to have been asked to visit these beautiful young people!

My parting message:
"It is necessary to make virtue fashionable."
-José Martí

Astonished by Yoani Sanchez being denied a visa...

"Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom."
-José Martí

I cannot understand the short-sightedness of the Cuban Government to resist granting Yoani Sanchez a visa to receive the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia University (she had already won a coveted Prémio Ortega y Gassét for journalism). I don't get it, admittedly.

It is the desire of every government, no matter what its ideological means or ends, to stay in power. That is plain. Yoani is highly critical of her government which appears to be doggedly unresponsive to the plight of its 25-50 year-old demographic. "A good government is one that offers jobs, peace and security to its citizens," to quote Silvio Rodriguez, Cuban artist and PCC party functionary. It may be that from the Cuban government's point of view freedom of movement is not a guaranteed right but a privilege. We in the U.S. have been guilty of the same in the past. But Cuba, like the U.S. is a signatory of the U.N. charter where article 13 stipulates freedom of movement as a right, not a privilege. (Not that the U.S. government has ever trampled upon the UN Charter--oh, no, that has never happened...well, not this year anyway.)

Seriously, to deny one of its celebrated citizens, even if she is critical of her government, is too great a risk for Cuba in the eyes of the world community. The present government in Cuba withholds its right to deny or to grant freedom of movement to any of its citizenry, that's clear, but it is a member of the world community and must also commit to the first line of its own constitution--directly inspired by Martí--

"WE DECLARE
our will that the law of laws of the Republic be guided by the following strong desire of José Martí, at last achieved; "I want the fundamental law of our republic to be the tribute of Cubans to the full dignity of man"

Please watch this video. I apologize, the video is not translated into any other language but in its original Spanish. You can read the transcript, in English, on Yoani's blog here.

200 yrs late: Poe's grand send off; Martí translates "The Raven"

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
--José Martí

Martí owed much to the decadent and symbolist movement in french poetry, who in turn revered Poe as a direct influence to their work. Martí translated & published two poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Annabelle Lee and The Raven. Below is Martí 's translation of the latter poem, one which seems to be more of a transposing to the Spanish, than a translation. Enjoy:

El Cuervo
-por Edgar Allan Poe

Una Medianoche fría, mientras yo triste leía
Sobre mucho tomo viejo, tomo añejo anos ha,
Cabeccando, dormitando, oí de pronto alguien llamando
Suavemente, alguien llamando a la puerta de mi hogar,
Es sin duda alguin amigo, que me viene a visitar:

¡Eso es y nada mas!

Bien recuerdo que fue en una noche de frío importuno
Y con [SIC] la sombra en la alfombra iba a formar.

Yo tenía sed de dia: yo quería hallar consuelo,
En mis libros, a mi duelo por aquella
Que los ángeles llaman Eleonor.
Leonor pura, la doncella de hermosura singular.
Y el sedoso y vago ruido, del cortinaje tupido
Me aterraba, me llenaba
Me llenaba de un...no sentido jamás:
Y, acallado mi oculto corazon, dije resuelto:
Es sin duda algun amigo que me quiere visitar,
Un amigo retardado que sin duda quiere entrar.

Con el animo robusto, dije, fuera susto
¡Señor mio! Dama mia, vuestra excusa he de implorar,
Pero estaba adormecido, y llamastéis con un ruido
Tan sauve, tan dormido, a la puerta de mi hogar
Que creía que no oía: abri pues de par en par,

¡ Ah, sombras, y nada mas!

Alli estuve tantas horas, tantas hora, en la sombra aterradora

Soñando un sueño que el hombre nunca se atrevío a soñar.

Pero nada se movía; pero nada aparecía
Pero sólo se entreoía la palabra "Leonor mía".
Que yo hablaba, y el eco se gozaba en murmurar:

Eso es, ¡y nada más!

-Obras Completas, 17:336

October 10: ¡Grito De Yara!, Cuba first rises against tyranny

I wonder how wise it would have been to have titled this entry "Cuba's Concord & Lexington", as I first intended; the rank and file of Cuba's first significant act against tyranny were erstwhile slaves, not free yeomen as in Massachusetts in 1775.

The Ten Years' War, (1868-1878), began on October 10, 1868, when planter-patriot Carlos Manuel de Céspedes precipitated the agreed date for the uprising, citing revolutionary exigencies. (Actually Cespedes wanted the revolution to begin in his province of Oriente, not in neighboring Camaguey, as the secretly assembled parliament agreed upon. )


Martí made countless speeches on three continents to observe this key event that started a sea-change in the hearts of his countrymen and women. As he made clear 25 years later, after Yara, there was no going back. If it were to have taken 100 years to extricate Cuba from the Spanish Empire, Martí reminds us that ever since Yara, Cubans had vowed to do just that.

Click Here to read the Manifesto, signed by Cespedes amongst others, published on 6 October 1868, four days before Cubans rose at Yara.

1978 Memorial Jose Marti, Havana, Cuba

1958 Memorial Jose Marti, Havana, Cuba

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An interesting account of the largest memorial dedicated to José Martí. I first saw it in 1994, cycling with my wife's cousin, Lydia Rodriguez. She is a very attractive woman and when she cycled past the same memorial, the honor guard yelled out "Mamita, what an ass!" I yelled back "thank you sweetheart", as if he meant me ( I've never understood "chuchería"). The guard retorted by screaming "¡Maricón!"

In that little urban moment, lies a typical Cuban love triangle, complete with homophobia and misogyny.

A Great Summer Read, A Primer to Aléjo Carpentier

Carpentier incarnates the perfect example of a Cuban intellectual. Eclectic in their authorities --baileywicks, really-- as people come to consult with them to better understand arcane subjects like, for instance, 18th century typography. 

Cuba is an island that begs, borrows and steals from all over the world; its demographic reflects the full spectrum of the world's diversity. It's music, ideology, its patois-like Spanish, diet, art, all human creation in short is imported, masticated, and spat out--and this is the miracle-- "a la Cubain". Havana's architecture, to name one example, is an amalgamation of thousands of years of varied architectural orders, all neatly packaged into little bourgeois homes and facades. 



Havana's architecture is given a protagonist's role in Carpentier’s in short novel, The Chase, that can act like a primer to his longer works. 

(Carpentier)

Incidentally, when I have visited Havana, I have liked to visit his grave in the Necropolis there (Cementério de Colón). This man who was a leading musicologist and aesthetic is buried under a nondescript headstone, deprived of any ornamentation. I wouldn't put it past Carpentier to mock his own vastly important body of work--typically Cuban!

Viva Sotomayor!

Where is the Algerian, Corsican, Vietnamese in France's highest court? Where is the Chechen in Russia's highest court? The Mayan in Mexico's, the Kurd in Iraq's, the Armenian in Turkey's, the Nigerian in England's, the Native American in Canada's, the Aboriginal in Australia's HIGHEST COURT????

For all our shortcomings, we're slowly moving towards a meritocracy.

¡Viva Sotomayor! ¡¡Séamos Sotomayorístas!!

Comments from a Radio Hate Monger from Boston

The last legitimate war will be the one against Hate.
--Jose Marti

This is nothing new. The America For Americans Movement became almost institutionalized after the U.S. 's industrial growth spurt at the turn of the 19 into the 20 century. While we're in need of CHEAP LABOR we have played the "give us your tired, your poor, etc." card. The financial growth of the 90's (unprecedented in U.S. history, let's remember) begged for cheap labor, easily exploitable, with no watchdog whatsoever. Well, we don't need them now, do we? Suddenly Mexicans are untermenchen, vermin, leeches.

Please listen to this Goebbels-like transmission. "Millions of leeches from a primitive country coming to leech off you," says Jay Severin on WTKK Radio in Boston (no this is not from a middle American city, nor southern red state, ok?). He goes on to blame the Mexicans for the Swine Flu, never minding that the Swine Flu seems to have originated in the U.S. READ THESE LATEST REPORTS ON THE SWINE FLU ORIGINS.

As the economy worsens, prepare yourselves for more...

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 man!

Eres mi Rey.