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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 that a war filled with horror must always be a bloody bond, because it cannot love those who have treated it without compassion, because cordiality and peace are not built on foundations of the recent dead and smoking ruins. Those who have trampled upon it should not invoke it. Those who know what must be do not want a bloody peace.

The Republic denies the right of conquest. Cuba became Spain’s through right of conquest.

The Republic condemns those who oppress. Spain has perpetually employed the right of oppression and of shameful exploitation and cruel persecution against Cuba.

The Republic, therefore, cannot retain what was acquired by means of a right it denies and kept by a series of violations of the right it condemns.

The Republic is raised on the shoulders of universal suffrage, of the people’s unanimous will.

And Cuba is raising itself that same way. Its plebiscite is its martyrology. Its suffrage is its revolution. When does a people express its desires more firmly than when it rises up in arms to obtain them?

Cuba proclaims its independence through the same right by which the Republic was proclaimed; how, then, can the Republic deny Cuba its right to be free, which is the same it claimed to become free itself? How can the Republic deny itself? How can it determine the fate of a people by imposing a way of life on it that does not include its complete, free and very evident will?

The President of the Republican Government has said that, if the Constituent Cortes did not vote for the Republic, the republicans would leave power, become the opposition again and respect the people’s will. How can the one who thus gives all-embracing power to the will of one people fail to hear and respect the will of another? Under the Republic, it is no longer a crime to be a Cuban — that tremendous original sin of my much-loved homeland, of which it bore only the baptism of degradation and infamy.

“Long live Spanish Cuba!” said the one who had to be President of the Assembly, and the Assembly said the same with him. Those who were carried to power by suffrage denied the right of suffrage as soon as they had ascended to power; those who, with Mr. Martos, said “No!” and abused reason, justice and gratitude. In the name of liberty, respect for the will of others, the sovereign will of the peoples, right, con science and the Republic: No! “Long live Spanish Cuba!” if that is what she wants, and “Long live free Cuba!” if such is her desire.

Cuba has decided on her emancipation; she has always wanted emancipation so she could rise as a Republic; she ventured to achieve her rights before Spain achieved her own; and she has sacrificed herself to gain her freedom. Will the Spanish Republic, then, be willing to use force to subdue those who are risking martyrdom to create a sister, Cuban Republic? Will the Republic be willing to rule her against her will?

People will say that, since Spain is giving Cuba the rights she requested, there is no longer any reason for her insurrection. I cannot think of that poor argument without bitterness, and I must truly blame those who provoke me for the harshness of my argument. Spain now wants to do good for Cuba. What right does Spain have to be beneficent after having been so cruel? And if it is to recover its honor, what right does it have to pay for that honor, which it did not gain in time, with another people’s freedom, granting benefits which that people did not request, for it had already won them? Why does it want them to be accepted now when it failed to grant them so many times? Why should the Cuban revolution agree to having Spain concede — as if they were within its competence to grant — the rights which cost Cuba so much blood and grief to defend? Spain is now atoning terribly for its colonial sins, which place it in such extremity that it no longer has any right to remedy them. The law of its errors condemns it to not appear kind. It would have the right to be kind if it had avoided that immense series of very great wrongs. It would have the right to be kind if it had even been humane in the continuation of that war that it has made barbarous and ungodly.

I am not referring now to the fact that Cuba has firmly resolved not to belong to Spain; I mean only that Cuba cannot belong to it any more. The chasm that divided Spain and Cuba has been filled, by Spain’s will, with corpses. Neither love nor harmony thrives on corpses; he who failed to pardon deserves no pardon. Cuba knows that the Republic is not clothed in death, but she cannot forget those many days of executions and of grief. Spain has come too late; the law of time condemns it.

The Republic knows that it is separated from the island by a broad space filled with the dead. The Republic hears, as I do, their terrifying voices. The Republic knows that to preserve Cuba new corpses must be heaped and much blood be spilled. It knows that to subjugate, subdue and do violence to the will of that people its own sons must die. Will it consent to have them die for what, if it were not the death of legality, would be the self-destruction of its honor? How ghastly if it consents! Wretched are those who dare to spill the blood of others who seek the same freedoms they themselves have sought. Wretched are those who thus abjure their right to happiness, honor and the esteem of humanity.

There is talk of the territory’s integrity. The Atlantic Ocean destroys that ridiculous argument. Enemy hands could show those who thus abuse the people’s patriotism, those who drag them down and deceive them, an English Rock; harsh hands could show them Florida; in judicious hands could show them vast Lusitania.

It is not the land that constitutes what is called the homeland’s integrity. A homeland is something more than oppression, something more than bits of land without freedom or life, something more than the right of possession by force. A homeland is a community of interests, the unity of traditions, a singleness of goals, the sweet and consoling fusion of love and hope.

Cubans do not live as Spaniards do; Cuban history is not that of Spaniards; what was imperishable glory for Spain, Spain itself has sought to be the deepest disgrace for Cubans. They thrive on different trade, have links with different countries and rejoice with different customs. They have no shared aspirations or identical goals, nor do they have cherished memories to unite them. The Cuban spirit thinks with bitterness of the grief the Spanish spirit has brought it; it struggles vigorously against Spanish domination. And then, since all the communities and all the identities that constitute the whole homeland are lacking, they invoke an illusion which will not serve; they invoke a deceitful lie when they invoke the integrity of the homeland. Peoples are joined only by bonds of fraternity and love.

Spain has never wanted to be Cuba’s sister; why should it pretend now that Cuba should be its sister? To secure Cuba to the Spanish Nation would be to exercise a right of conquest over her — more abusive and repugnant now than ever before. The Republic cannot exercise it without bringing the curses of the honored peoples upon its guilty head.

Many times, Cuba asked Spain for the rights which Spain now wants to grant it. Many times, Spain refused to grant those rights; how then, can it be surprised that Cuba refuses, in its turn, to accept as a tardy gift, an honor which it has purchased with the generous blood of its sons, an honor which it still seeks now with unbreakable determination and a firmness which no one should seek to destroy?

Because of different pressing needs, endowed with opposite characters, surrounded by different countries and deeply divided by past cruelties, without Cuba’s having any reason for loving Spain or any will to belong to it and in view of the grief that Spain has amassed over Cuba, is it not crazy to pretend that two peoples which are separated by character, customs, needs, traditions and lack of love should be joined as one simply because of their memories of bereavement and pain?

They say that Cuba’s separation would mean the crumbling of the homeland. It would be so if the homeland were equivalent to that selfish, sordid idea of domination and avarice. But even if it were, the retention of Cuba for Spain against its extremely explicit and powerful will — the will of a people that is struggling for its independence is always powerful — would mean the crumbling of the honor of the homeland they invoke. Imposition is the mark of tyrants. Oppression, that of the infamous. May the Spanish Republic never want to be tyrannical and cowardly. The good of the homeland, which is being achieved nobly after so many difficulties, should not be thus sacrificed. Honor won at such great cost should not be so stained.

Cuba’s unanimous, persistent struggle shows its firm determination to obtain its emancipation. The memories that link it to Spain are of bitterness and grief. It thinks that it has paid a high price for the sonorousness of the Spanish tongue, with the illustrious lives which Spain has caused to be lost. Does this new, regenerated Spain called the Spanish Republic wish to become involved in the disgrace of imposing oppression that is, above all, unfair, ungodly and irrational? This would be such a mistake that I hope it will never engage in anything so filled with misery.

The revolutionaries in Cuba declared its 400,000 Negro slaves free before Spain did any such thing. The government’s political prisons are filled with 10- and 11-year-old Negroes who have just been shipped in, venerable 80-year-olds and idiot Negroes of 100, and they are whipped through the streets and mutilated — and killed — by the blows. In Cuba, the authorities shoot those who seem suspicious — even members of the government — and the women are raped and dragged through the streets. Those who are fighting for their homeland are killed, either immediately or, if their immediate deaths cannot be excused, slowly. Some leaders have been sentenced to imprisonment for having beaten captured rebels to death and for having continued to vent their rage on their dead bodies, yet others, who have presented parts of the bodies of mutilated rebels as trophies, have been pardoned. Such horrors have taken place that I don’t want to remind the Republic of them, nor do I want to tell you, lest I upset you, but they are so terrible that merely to say that they must be corrected is to offend your honor.

This shows that any union between Cuba and Spain is quite impossible. If there is to be a fruitful, loyal and affectionate union, as a fair and patriotic resolution is needed, the fate of the peoples must be decided by working with perfect reason, and the homeland — disfigured by the arrogant, debased by the ambitious, discredited by fools and deserving of so little fortune because of its actions in Cuba — must be honored by strictly upholding justice.

Cuba calls for the independence to which it is entitled by life itself, which it knows it has; by the energetic steadfastness of its sons; by the richness of its territory; by the natural independence of that territory; and, more than anything else, because this is the firm, unanimous will of the Cuban people.

Spain feels that it must hold on to Cuba and cannot do so except — I’ve forgotten why — by trampling on its rights, imposing its will and staining its honor. Whoever wanted to retain Cuba’s wealth at such a cost would be unworthy, as would anyone who let other nations think he was sacrificing his honor for material benefit.

Virtue now is simply the performance of duty, no longer its heroic exaggeration, and the Republic does not consent to its diminution. Its government knows how to build a foundation on wise and generous justice and does not govern a people against its will — for justice brings forth all powers from the will of the people. That government does not struggle against itself; is not dishonored; does not fear; and does not cede to demands of ridiculous arrogance, exaggerated pride or disguised ambition. Because the law, the needs of republics and sublime republican ideas recognize Cuba’s independence, it recognizes it, too. Thus, if it should end its domination over Cuba, which would be simply the legitimate consequence of its principles, the strict observance of the tenets of justice, it would bring imperishable glory to Spain. For too long, Spain has been beset by indecision and fear; let Spain at last have the courage to be glorious.

Does the government of the Republic fear that the people would not respect such a noble solution? This would be to confess that the Spanish people are not republicans.

Does it not dare persuade the people that this is what true honor demands? This would mean that it prefers power to heeding the prompting of conscience.

Won’t the Republican government think as I do? This would mean that the Spanish Republic neither respects the will of the sovereign people nor has managed to understand the republican ideal.

I do not think that it will give way to fear. But, if it should, that trans feral of its rights would be the first sign of the loss of all.

If it does not do as I think it should, because it fails to understand things as I do, this means that it pays more attention to its past errors than to the extension of new ideas — sublime because they are limitless and pure — and that irrational pride over very painful glories still disturbs its spirit and makes it want to hold fast to things it never should have possessed, because it never knew how to possess them.

If it thinks as I do, meets with resistance, defies it (even though its effort is not crowned with victory) and accepts Cuba’s independence — because Cuba’s sons declare that only force can make them belong to Spain — it will lose nothing, because Cuba is already lost to Spain. It will wrest nothing from its territory, for Cuba has already torn itself away. It will be complying with the republican ideal in its legitimate purity. It will be opting for life, because failure to accept is tantamount to suicide. It will be confirming its own freedoms, because anyone who denies the right to govern itself to a people that has already freed itself does not deserve to have freedoms himself. It will avoid the shedding of republican blood and will not be oppressive and fratricidal. It will acknowledge that it is losing — in fact, it has already lost — possession of a people that does not want to belong to it and has shown that it does not need its protection or its government to live in glory and firmness. In short, by sanctioning a right, it will be renouncing the shedding of blood and giving up a territory it has already lost in exchange for the respect of humankind; the admiration of peoples; and ineffable, eternal glory in the future.

If the Spanish Republic’s ideal is the universe and believes that it must live as a single people, as a province of God, what right does it have to take the lives of others who seek the same goal? More than unfair, more than cruel, shedding the blood of its brothers is infamous. When faced with the rights of the world, what weight do Spain’s rights have? When compared with future divinity, what value does the violent wish for domination have? What value do rights acquired by means of conquest and bloodied by never interrupted but always sanctified oppression have?

Cuba wants to be free. That is what it says with incalculable hardships, with its struggle for the cherished Republic, with the blood of heroic American young men. Anyone who is too afraid to listen to his con science must be a coward. Any republic that strangles another republic must be fratricidal.

Cuba wants to be free. And, since the peoples of South America obtained their freedom from the reactionary governments — as did Spain from the French; Italy from Austria; Mexico from Napoleon’s ambitions; the United States, from England; and all the other peoples, from their oppressors — so, under the law of its irrevocable will and the law of historical necessity, Cuba, too, must achieve its independence.

It will be said that the Republic will not oppress Cuba any more, and perhaps it will not, but Cuba became a Republic before Spain did. Why should those who have taken to the field of battle as free men and martyrs to make their country a republic accept that condition from someone who, posing as a master, offers it as a gift?

Let the Spanish Republic not be dishonored; let its triumphant ideal not be halted. Let it not murder its brothers or have its sons shed the blood of its other sons. Let it not oppose Cuba’s independence. Otherwise, the Republic of Spain will be a Republic of injustice and ignominy, and the government of freedom will, in this case, be liberticidal.

Madrid, February 15, 1873