The history of humanity has shown that “theories” about the natural inequality of men occupy a prominent place in the ideology of all oppressors of peoples. Thus, there is no shortage of ultra-reactionary conceptions that consider certain social classes, races, or nations (those to which the oppressors belong) to be superior, and that view them as the sole custodians of civilization.
As is well known, the American imperialists are no exception. One of the pillars upon which the formation of big capital in the United States was fundamentally based was the barbaric plundering of the Indians—which led practically to their annihilation—and the enslavement of Black people. And as capitalism in that country entered its imperialist phase, the monopolies accumulated gigantic superprofits through the plunder of colonies, semi-colonies, and dependent countries in general.
To ideologically justify this exploitation and oppression of our America, the Yankee colonialists have used, among other arguments, that of the supposed inferiority of Latin peoples, their inability to govern themselves, as well as the “civilizing mission” that the powerful northern nation was called upon to fulfill.
One of the first clear and cynical manifestations of these reactionary ideas of the American big bourgeoisie regarding our country is the article “Do We Want Cuba?”, published in March 1889 by the Philadelphia newspaper The Manufacturer, which provoked a swift and vigorous response from José Martí. That response came in the form of a letter published 90 years ago under the title “In Defense of Cuba.”
The Manufacturer, a mouthpiece for prominent Republican Party tycoons and a representative of the expansionist and aggressive policies of U.S. imperialism, acknowledges the economic, political, and other advantages that the annexation of Cuba—then a topic of discussion in government circles—would bring to the United States. But it categorically rejects the idea of annexation, not out of respect for a people’s right to self-determination, but by advancing arguments that reveal the arrogance and conceit of the sectors it represents, their utter ignorance, and their contempt for Latin American nations.
The newspaper divides Cuba’s population into three “classes”: Spaniards, Cubans of Spanish descent, and Blacks. And, after indiscriminately attributing to all the children of Spain the worst qualities inherent in Spanish colonialists, it denigrates white Cubans in this way:
“To the defects of the men of the paternal race, they add effeminacy and an aversion to all effort that truly borders on illness. They do not know how to stand up for themselves; they are lazy, of poor moral character, and incapable by nature and experience of fulfilling the obligations of citizenship in a great and free republic. Their lack of virile strength and self-respect is demonstrated by the indolence with which they have for so long submitted to Spanish oppression; and their very attempts at rebellion have been so pitifully ineffective that they rise little above the dignity of a farce.”
And he adds: “As for the Cuban blacks, they are clearly at the level of barbarism. The most degraded Black man in Georgia is better prepared for the Presidency than the average Black man in Cuba for American citizenship.”
Given the picture he paints, the only possible solution for The Manufacturer is to completely Americanize Cuba, “by populating it,” he says, “with people of our race.” Which, in practice, suggested the extinction of the island’s inhabitants.
José Martí’s response was not long in coming. Just nine days after the article in question was published, and four days after it was commented on approvingly by the New York newspaper The Evening Post (a mouthpiece for liberal politics), Martí exposed and condemned both the annexationist efforts of certain circles—Cuban and American—and the reprehensible discriminatory views of the Yankee “elite.”
For several years prior, José Martí’s protégé had already noticed that arrogance and disdain on the part of the North toward the peoples south of the Rio Grande. Thus, in a letter dated May 1886 to Ricardo Rodríguez Otero, while indignantly refuting annexationist rumors, she states that Cuba was never anything to the U.S. but a desirable possession, “with no other drawback than its inhabitants, whom they consider rebellious, lazy, and contemptible.”
And now, in 1889, she rightly observes that both the spokespeople for aggressive policy and those for liberal policy agree in slanderously distorting the qualities of the Cuban people, and that neither one nor the other is in the least concerned, when analyzing the problem, the fundamental and inalienable right of the Cuban people to have a free government—a legitimate aspiration further supported by sufficient historical merits—and to decide for themselves what is best for the country’s development and the happiness of their children.
He refutes the slanderous accusations of “lack of virile strength,” highlighting the heroism and resolve of Cubans in the struggle against their Spanish oppressors. “Those city youths and small-statured mestizos,” he asserts, “knew how to rise up in a single day against a cruel government, pay for their passage to the theater of war with the proceeds from their watches and trinkets, live off their labor while the country of the free held their ships in the interest of the enemies of liberty, obey as soldiers, sleep in the mud, eat roots, fight ten years without pay, defeat the enemy with a tree branch, and die… a death of which no one should speak except with their head uncovered.”
José Martí refutes the accusation that Cubans are lazy and “do not know how to stand up for themselves,” pointing to the admiration and respect that the revolutionary emigrants earned in the United States itself through their hardworking, honest, and self-sacrificing lives; the fact that they had managed to overcome the immense obstacles of language, climate, lack of resources, and the indifference of a nation that called itself the “empire of freedom” yet did not utter a word or extend a hand to help those who were fighting and dying precisely for freedom on the nearby island.
And it offers relevant examples of the immense glory that many of Cuba’s sons and daughters brought to their country in all spheres of life, confirming that patriotic foresight of Martí: “No honorable Cuban will humiliate himself to the point of being received as a moral pariah, for the mere sake of his homeland, in a people that denies his ability, insults his virtue, and despises his character.”
There is no doubt that the ideas of “Vindication of Cuba” form the foundation of our people’s healthy national pride and their most beautiful patriotic and revolutionary traditions. They served as the banner of struggle for those fighting for freedom, democracy, social progress, and socialism during the period of the “mediated republic,” in the face of the interventions, humiliations, and insolence of the “powerful and greedy neighbor,” and in the face of the shameful subjugation of other Cubans—representatives of the island’s pro-imperialist oligarchy or those aspiring to be so—who never possessed a sense of national dignity and who surrendered their souls, along with the nation’s wealth, to “the Romans of this continent.”
But in the end, history, the exceptional and definitive judge, proved our greatest national hero and those who never lowered their flag absolutely right. These Cubans, black and white, whom the Yankee imperialists branded as inferior beings, who bore on their shoulders the weight of four and a half centuries of colonialism and neocolonialism, oppression and underdevelopment, have been able to shake off such a burdensome load in an extremely brief historical span, and to break the yoke of their national and foreign oppressors, particularly that of the Yankee neocolonialists, who are, paradoxically, the ones who have fostered in their own land the climate of ignorance, incompetence, and moral decay that they falsely attributed to the children of Cuba.
These Cubans, timid and of low moral character according to the American plutocracy, have been able to organize and lead to victory the first socialist revolution on this continent, and they march with a sure step toward the most just and advanced society that human history has ever known.
There is no better tribute to José Martí on this anniversary of “Vindication of Cuba” than the irreversible progress of this glorious revolution, which has not only justified the trust placed by our illustrious forerunner in the moral reserves of his people, but also constitutes the vindication of the great Latin American homeland, of all the peoples subjugated and neglected by imperialism throughout the world.
